Managing and Provisioning Non-Fabric Catalyst 9800 Wireless LAN Controllers from Cisco DNA Center

Introduction

This article provides a sample configuration example on how to add, manage, and provision non-fabric Catalyst 9800 Wireless LAN Controllers via Cisco DNA-Center.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of Catalyst 9800 and DNA-Center configuration

Requirements

Refer software compatibility matrix for solution compatibility requirements on Catalyst 9800 WLC and Cisco DNA-Center.

Components Used

9800-CL on 16.12.4a release.

Cisco DNA-Center on 2.1.2.0 release.

Configure

From Cisco DNA-C GUI:

1. Log into Cisco DNA-C GUI 

2. On the top left corner of the webpage, click the "hamburger" menu, click on "Tools", and then click on "Discovery":

Note: You can alternatively discover your C9800 device using the "Inventory" menu.

3. On the Discovery page, click “Add Discovery”:

4. Enter the C9800 WLC details 

Scroll down to enable the CLI/SNMP/HTTP/HTTPS credentials:

NOTE: The username/password/SSHv2 needs to be configured on the device first.

To enable NETCONF on the Discovery page:

NOTE: The default NETCONF port on C9800 is port 830.

Then press the "Discover" button and press the "Start" button:

NOTE: You can schedule the Discovery process for a different time and date.

If everything got configured correctly on Cisco DNA Center and on the 9800 WLC, then the Discovery should end up looking similar to this:

Make sure to validate that the device is in a "Managed" state in the "Inventory" page:

C9800 is now added to Cisco DNA-C.

Provisioning C9800 via Cisco DNA-C

Step1: Design

1. From the Cisco DNA-C home page click on the Design tab

A site map and floor plan has already been added to the Network Hierarchy tab. 

2. To add Wireless SSID, click on the “Network Settings” tab and navigate to “Wireless” and then click “Add”

Scroll down to access security settings and configure PSK password.

Clicking the “Next” tab brings you to the “Wireless Profiles” tab where you will configure your wireless profile to be assigned to the specific site.

Clicking the “Finish” button should add both the WLAN and Wireless Policy profiles you just created.

Step2: Provisioning

Now that the WLAN and profiles have been designed, we can provision them to the respective WLC’s. For this, click on the “Provision” tab on the top of Cisco DNA-C

1. On the Provision menu, you can filter for your device name under device inventory “Filter” option.

2. Select your WLC and hover over “Actions” field and navigate to “Provision”
3. Add device to your site 

4. In this example AP and WLC are in same location, you can skip past the configuration and advanced configuration step here and deploy from the summary page.

 Validate if the provisioning was successful:

5. Next step is to provision your Access Point using same method as above.

6. You can now validate the provisioning status from C9800 GUI>>Configurations>>WLAN

You have now successfully provisioned WLC/AP via Cisco DNA-C

Troubleshoot

From Cisco DNA-C "sudo rca" from the CLI of "each" Cisco DNAC in the cluster;

From C9800 CLI:

Debugs:

debug snmp requests
debug snmp packets
debug netconf-yang level debug 

show platform software yang-management process 

Verifies whether all the processes are running.

If netconf-yang is running, all the processes except gnmib should be UP state