What if the ZoneDirector fails?

[steven_smith_60]

Can anyone advise what would happe to our wireless network if the ZoneDirector (3000 series) was to suffer a hardware failure? Would the wireless network cease to function altogether, or would we just lose the ability to make configuration changes?

If the former option is the case, is there anything we can do to the configuration of the APs to safeguard against this eventuality and to eliminate this potential single point of failure?

[harry_howes]

I think it depends on how your access points are configured. If you are doing radius login like myself, then current connections will work, but new connection will not. We had a ZoneDirector 3000 go down and it stopped all Radius authentications. If you are using PSK then I would think that if the ZoneDirector goes down there would not be any issues, as the Access Points should have all the configuration information to allow new users to connect.

[keith_redfield]

An HA (high availability) configuration using a redundant ZD3000 controller is the best mitigation to ensure un-interrupted service. You can increase the timers which control how long an AP stays up (as of 9.5 I believe), but new connections will still be limited.

[harish_kumar_56]

An access point Can be up and running with out connection to the Zone-Director from 10 min to 1440 minutes.By default it is 30 min if the auto recovery field on the WB GUI is left to disabled set to 0 the AP will continue to service existing associated clients once authenticated but will not accept any new client associations

This feature is avaliable as manual input in minutes in the provided field on 9.5 WEB UI and on version 9.6 their is also is a checkbox option to enable or disable the auto recovery function.

the same function can also be enabled from the ZD CLi
ruckus(config-ap-policy) auto-recovery (NUMBER)

ruckus(config-ap-policy) no auto-recovery

[dtsblake_588878]

I heard rumors about 9.7 and that it may allow the APs to work in some type of "stand-alone" mode after the AP loses "the link" with the ZD for some period of time.