Aerohive Access Points with no Hive Manager

[kevin_hall]

We are a primary school with an aerohive network which was installed when the school was built. We have had no problems until now. All the LEDs on our access points are solid green. We managed to find out who installed the access points and they informed us that our local council IT department had been managing our access points with hive manager and they had turned it off. They informed us that the access points would continue working without hive manager.

Is it correct that the access points will continue working without hive manager? I am asking this question because we are having issues with our network at the moment which I am investigating.

Secondly, how do I obtain our own copy of hive manager because I assume we will need it to manage our access points.

[bpowers]

If you're able to get into one, first step I'd take is testing it's connectivity. Pinging the APs default gateway should work as evident of the green light. but can it ping 8.8.8.8 or can it ping the DHCP server clients are served from?

A few commands that might yield some useful output are:

trace 8.8.8.8

show version detail

show capwap client

show int mgt0 dhcp client

show station

show run

Feel free to dump some of the output from the above mentioned commands here and we'll see if we can provide any more input.

As for the green light, it means that the AP should have internet access but something is not quite right. In your case the fact that their management platform has been turned off would possibly be the reason for green light instead of white.

There's a couple ways to get a Hivemanager of your own as well (since you asked in your original message). You can use Aerohives cloud (assuming that it supports those older APs still). You can stand up a VM instance on your network if you have some VM infrastructure. I believe they still sell 1/2U physical appliances too. Finding an Aerohive (or not Extreme) VAR would probably be step one. I'm not a sales person, but if you want to direct message me, I'd be happy to have a conversation about how my company might could assist in straightening things out and even helping you stand up a mgmt platform of your choice) and/or put you in contact with one of our sales folks since we're still an Aerohive VAR.

[kevin_hall]

We have some documentation and they are HiveAp 100 series access points (HiveAp 110 or 120). I do have console access but no experience of dealing with these access points as they have just worked so far. At the moment I am just trying to confirm that the access points are not the cause of our issues. If their settings are unchanged when they cannot reach hive manager then they should continue to work as before.

A Google search does not really explain what "Green: The default router is through the backhaul Ethernet interface, but not all conditions for normal operations (white) have been met." actually means.

[bpowers]

Kevin,

Yes, the APs should retain configuration and function as is with or without a hivemanager connection. But a green LED is not a good sign.

I assume these are some older .11n APs, do you know the exact model? Or able to snap a picture of one? As most newer APs have two LED colors (amber/white).

http://docs.aerohive.com/330000/docs/help/english/ng/Content/hardware/ap/ap330-ap350.htm?Highlight=Hardware%20User%20Guide

"Green: The default router is through the backhaul Ethernet interface, but not all conditions for normal operations (white) have been met."

Without access to the mgmt platform that managed them, things are not going to be easy. As you will need credentials to SSH/console into the devices to determine what is going on. And the same access would be needed to easily move them to another Hivemanager platform for management. Do you have that access by chance?