Best Practice to move/remove WLC APs from Spectrum topology containers

Products

• CA Spectrum

Issue/Introduction

I enabled the AP discovery from WLC Manager and I can now see a lot of APs showing up in their WLC devices based containers. How can I keep the APs in a seperate container and not show up in the respective Containers of the Topology.

This is causing a lot of confusion with the operations team as they are seeing thousands of APs and messing up the topologies/Containers.

Environment

Release : 20.2

Component : Spectrum Core / SpectroSERVER

Cause

There is no way to force Spectrum to create the AP's in a specific container and currently an Enhancement has been opened to request this.  

Resolution

If Access points are not required nor desired in your environment, do not run the AP discovery from WLC manager.  The events from the AP will be placed on the WLC device so APs will still be monitored and alarmed in Spectrum.

Based around the changes made in 10.2.2 to provide control over Access points, we can now move them independently of the WLC.

If you want the APs in their own container and the WLC in another, once the APs and and WLCs are in the AP destination container, turn off the auto move function and move the WLC out of the AP container.

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/it-operations-management/spectrum/10-4-1/managing-network/wlc-manager.html

Moving Access Points (APs) with WLC
From 10.2.2, the WLC Manager includes the option to move access points (APs) with the WLC. When the WLC is moved to any other container, all the APs attached to it are moved to that respective WLC container. This feature automates the movement of APs across various containers. By default, this value is set to Yes. If you want to retain the APs attached in the  WLC container, then set this value to No, then access points (APs) remain in the same container, although the WLC is moved to a different container.

 

Additional Information

You can tell Spectrum to not create the AP models for specific WLCs. Please reference the following knowledge articles:

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=106888

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=106889

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=142948

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=12270