Smarts IP 9.1 and later: Wireless Access Points (WAP or AP) and wireless clients are detected and using up licenses for Wireless Controllers; Can this be prevented?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


Wireless Access Points (WAPs or APs) and clients are detected and taking up licenses in Smarts IP 9.1 or later environment.

The following conditions, events or system behaviors may be observed with this issue after upgrading to Smarts IP 9.1 or later:

• After upgrade to Smarts IP 9.1 or later, Wireless Access Points (WAP) and clients are detected and taking up licenses
• Wireless APs are being discovered on WLC devices
• Earlier versions of Smarts IP did not take up licenses
• Receiving large amount of RogueAPDetect messages after upgrade to Smarts IP 9.1 or later

 

This article explains the following:

• How to avoid/prevent Smarts IP 9.1 or later environment from discovering and monitoring Wireless Access Points (WAP) and clients
• How to limit the Smarts IP device licenses used by WAPs and clients
• How to influence/decrease the count of actual number of systems in Smarts IP Managers
• How to rule out/delete all Wireless APs and AP clients completely from being monitored by Smarts IP Manager
• How to prevent RogueAPDetect messages from appearing in Smarts IP console

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

In Smarts IP 9.1 and later versions, Smarts IP discovers Wireless Controllers, WirelessAccessPoints, Wireless Clients and Authentication server as part of wireless LAN discovery and monitoring. Wireless LAN management is a licensed feature. 

The basic wireless feature is enabled by the AP_WIFI license key. Even if a user has the basic AP_WIFI license, the number of Wireless Access Points or WirelessController discovery is limited by the appropriate license count.

• WirelessAccessPoint: The number of WirelessAccessPoint to be discovered is controlled by the count of the AP_AP_CNT license key.
• WirelessController: The number of WirelessController to be discovered is controlled by the count of the AP_CTL_CNT license key.
• WirelessClient: The discovery of WirelessClient is not controlled by license counts.

Resolution

To have a Wireless Controller (WLC) discovered as a normal device, without discovering Wireless APs, clients and Wireless features, do the following.
 

1. Open the Smarts IP discovery.conf file using sm_edit.
2. Disable the WifiEnabled flag (by default its Enabled). To do this, set the value to FALSE in the discovery.conf file as shown in the following:

------------------------------------

# WIFIEnabled

# Enables or disables Wifi device discovery, monitoring, and analysis:

#

# Default Value = TRUE

#

WIFIEnabled = FALSE

-------------------------------------

3. Restart the domain.
4. Delete the WLC device from domain and discover it again, or run a Discover All after domain restart.

Additional Information

This issue was initially observed in a Smarts IP 9.2.1 environment.