Clusters

A cluster is a group of HPE Aruba Networking Gateways operating as a single entity to provide high availability and service continuity for tunneled clients in a network. Gateway clusters provide redundancy for HPE Aruba Networking APs with mixed or tunneled WLANs, HPE Aruba Networking switches configured for user-based tunneling (UBT), and tunneled clients in the event of maintenance or failure.

Clustering provides the following features and benefits:

• Stateful Client Failover – When a Gateway is taken down for maintenance or fails, APs, UBT switches and clients continue to receive service from another Gateway in the cluster without any disruption to applications.

• Load Balancing – Device and client sessions are automatically distributed and shared between the Gateways in the cluster. This distributes the workload between the cluster nodes, minimizes the impact of maintenance and failure events and provides a better connection experience for clients.

• Seamless Roaming – When a client roams between APs, the clients remain anchored to the same Gateway in the cluster to provide a seamless roaming experience. Clients maintain their VLAN membership and IP addressing as they roam.

• Ease of Deployment – A Gateway cluster is automatically formed when assigned to a group or site in Central without any manual configuration.

• Live Upgrades – Allows customers to perform in-service cluster upgrades of Gateways while the network remains fully operational. The Live Upgrade feature allows upgrades to be completely automated. This is a key feature for customers with mission-critical networks that must remain operational 24/7.