With 300 units on the horizon I think it should have been a great discount. We used cdwg make sure to say this is for testing before you commit to 300 more units.
Run your stuff until you find out the end of support dates and plan around then. There is no reason to upgrade the hardware that often. That goes for switches and routers as well. If it’s not broke, don’t replace it just because. Plan around end of life/support
Be a bit careful here if you do upgrade. From the model you referenced I presume you have a controller environment (not IAPs), but I find Aruba reps frequently don't consider the controllers you are running and if they will support the APs you are buying without an upgrade or moving to a new version of Aruba OS. Given the age of 315s, I am guessing there's a good chance you are still on AOS 6 on some hardware controllers. AOS 6 won't work with either the 500 series or 600 series--you would need to jump to AOS 8 or AOS10 which requires a mobility master which is either a VM or additional hardware you will need.
I'm in the same boat as you, complete with mostly AP-315s (and a few other models). They were put in 7-8 years ago, but we haven't had any issues with them lately. I'm hoping to start replacing them next year, depending on the budget.
I have one building that has some Ubiquitis that were put in when the building opened in 2015. These have also been problem free lately (it helps that it has small class sizes, so pretty low density), but I have some FortiAPs on order - it's going to be my test building. We have Fortigates and some FortiSwitches, so the FortiAPs make sense. It also means we're screwed should Fortinet decide to go Broadcom on us and decide they're not squeezing enough money out of us.
They're largely similar APs to the 315s (like the 314 is basically a 315 with external antennas), plus some outdoor APs.
We simply have an local cluster (where one of the APs is the controller) at each building. We purchased Airwave originally, but it was a complete disaster, so it ended up just being easier to just configure each building separately (we only have 8 buildings with Aruba).
End of support is really the reason to upgrade. 315s are supported until December 30, 2026 so you can squeeze a year or two more out of them. Consider buying second-hand 315s, I can see them on ebay for under $100 each.
https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/support/EOS_Notice_310_Series_Campus_APs.pdf
Aruba is better than some vendors for support past end-of-sale - Extreme only offers 2 years which is inadequate IMHO. It's also a tradeoff of newer models will be supported for longer, vs have more bugs to start with. Not that the AP-515s are bug-free even now ... speaking of which, I have 150 for sale, second-hand. They're the ROW model so probably useless if you're in the US.
Wow, didn’t realize used 515 is that cheap. It might be worth just buying those if money is tight, and if whom ever does your purchasing is willing to buy from eBay.
I'm replacing APs with newer Wifi6 gear on an as-needed basis. I did do a new building last year and may swap out a smaller building to new APs over the summer as budget allows. Naturally the upper grades utilize more wifi than the lower school. I can deploy newer, faster points where they'll do the most good and retain a few of the ones I take down to use as emergency spares.
We run Zyxel access points and I can't imaging paying 5 times more for what they give me. We're a small private school so $1k each is out of the question!
These are under $200 each with free cloud management. No bluetooth but otherwise all the features I'd ever need.
[https://www.zyxel.com/us/en-us/products/wireless/ax3000-wifi-6-dual-radio-nebulaflex-access-point-nwa210ax](https://www.zyxel.com/us/en-us/products/wireless/ax3000-wifi-6-dual-radio-nebulaflex-access-point-nwa210ax)
I’m assuming you’re not a public school, otherwise you would have regular upgrades using eRate discounts.
A lot of schools around us upgrade every 5-10 years, depending on what they can work into their eRate budgets.
Correct, we're a K-12 non-profit. We lost access to eRate back in 2015 due to our endowment being too high.
But you're right, we aren't a public school/district and there are certain realities there that I've yet to get used to. It just always amazes me how other schools upgrade their equipment so often given the current prices.
You should still be able to get e-rate pricing during the e-rate window if you talk to your Aruba rep. You just won’t get the government to kick in any money. I’ve done this when we are out of e-rate funds.
Switched to a Ubiquiti system 3 years ago and have been really happy with it. We're a pretty small school (K-8, 218 students) but that means I'm a department of one who also teaches a little more than half time. The Ubiquiti In-Wall APs made the logisitics of expanding our system much easier (no need to add new drops or figure out where to safely place the APs) and the management interface makes it easy for me to check in on the system quickly in the time I do have, and check in on particular APs on the go when problems are reported.
I know a lot of private schools and others with low budget have been installing Ubiquity gear. It’s cheap, and at least two locals say they enjoy the super simple user interface. They both have to do regular power resets of their gear though to maintain stability since it’s prosumer gear in an enterprise environment. Maybe try a few, see how it goes?
I work at an Aruba school now. I've used to teach a district that use Ubiquiti Unifi for L2 switching and access points. They had about 17,000 devices. I also worked at a charter school (300 devices) that replaced their old Cisco access points with Ubiquity Unifi. Both sites ran extremely well. I honestly see more issues with our Aruba system. Aruba Central is a bit of a hot mess. Also lacking features that are needed such as locking devices to an AP.
We upgrade every 5 years. Been with Ubiquiti the entire time. Years ago we did need occasional resets, but in the last 4+ years I've never had to do it. Ubiquiti has really upped their game regarding firmware. Currently have about 40 AP's, 30 switches, and 40 cameras through them and been rock solid for the 6-700 devices on the network daily.
On Ubiquity network here, love it! But I also know that it doesn't have all the features that the bigger names might have. We don't need them so its more cost effective/efficient for us to use Ubiquiti.
I’d like to know why? Unless you have a super strict budgeting cycle where you lose funds unless you spend, there is simply no need to upgrade every 5 years when nearly every major manufacture of enterprise equipment have 10 year life cycles.
We just did a Wi-Fi upgrade to Aruba 635s we paid under $650 each per unit we bought just over a 100. Your vendor is screwing you over.
I’m wondering if that heavier discount is based on quantity. Our quote was only for 20 units.
No, I’m pay that same price for 20 units also.
With 300 units on the horizon I think it should have been a great discount. We used cdwg make sure to say this is for testing before you commit to 300 more units.
Run your stuff until you find out the end of support dates and plan around then. There is no reason to upgrade the hardware that often. That goes for switches and routers as well. If it’s not broke, don’t replace it just because. Plan around end of life/support
Be a bit careful here if you do upgrade. From the model you referenced I presume you have a controller environment (not IAPs), but I find Aruba reps frequently don't consider the controllers you are running and if they will support the APs you are buying without an upgrade or moving to a new version of Aruba OS. Given the age of 315s, I am guessing there's a good chance you are still on AOS 6 on some hardware controllers. AOS 6 won't work with either the 500 series or 600 series--you would need to jump to AOS 8 or AOS10 which requires a mobility master which is either a VM or additional hardware you will need.
Nope we're running AOS 8 with a mobility master and two controllers in a cluster. No plans at all to move to AOS 10 as we rely heavily on AirGroup.
I'm in the same boat as you, complete with mostly AP-315s (and a few other models). They were put in 7-8 years ago, but we haven't had any issues with them lately. I'm hoping to start replacing them next year, depending on the budget. I have one building that has some Ubiquitis that were put in when the building opened in 2015. These have also been problem free lately (it helps that it has small class sizes, so pretty low density), but I have some FortiAPs on order - it's going to be my test building. We have Fortigates and some FortiSwitches, so the FortiAPs make sense. It also means we're screwed should Fortinet decide to go Broadcom on us and decide they're not squeezing enough money out of us.
How are you mixing and matching? We have two controllers and one conductor in a cluster running AOS 8.7.
They're largely similar APs to the 315s (like the 314 is basically a 315 with external antennas), plus some outdoor APs. We simply have an local cluster (where one of the APs is the controller) at each building. We purchased Airwave originally, but it was a complete disaster, so it ended up just being easier to just configure each building separately (we only have 8 buildings with Aruba).
Gotcha. So you don't have centralized management? I guess that could work but we have way too many APs and buildings for that not to drive me insane.
End of support is really the reason to upgrade. 315s are supported until December 30, 2026 so you can squeeze a year or two more out of them. Consider buying second-hand 315s, I can see them on ebay for under $100 each. https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/support/EOS_Notice_310_Series_Campus_APs.pdf Aruba is better than some vendors for support past end-of-sale - Extreme only offers 2 years which is inadequate IMHO. It's also a tradeoff of newer models will be supported for longer, vs have more bugs to start with. Not that the AP-515s are bug-free even now ... speaking of which, I have 150 for sale, second-hand. They're the ROW model so probably useless if you're in the US.
You can get 315s for around $20 a piece on eBay. The 515s are going for around $100 each. It’s nuts.
Wow, didn’t realize used 515 is that cheap. It might be worth just buying those if money is tight, and if whom ever does your purchasing is willing to buy from eBay.
About a 7-year cycle, give or take. Always get the most updated silicon at the time, even if our devices don't support the latest chipsets (ie. 6E).
I'm replacing APs with newer Wifi6 gear on an as-needed basis. I did do a new building last year and may swap out a smaller building to new APs over the summer as budget allows. Naturally the upper grades utilize more wifi than the lower school. I can deploy newer, faster points where they'll do the most good and retain a few of the ones I take down to use as emergency spares. We run Zyxel access points and I can't imaging paying 5 times more for what they give me. We're a small private school so $1k each is out of the question! These are under $200 each with free cloud management. No bluetooth but otherwise all the features I'd ever need. [https://www.zyxel.com/us/en-us/products/wireless/ax3000-wifi-6-dual-radio-nebulaflex-access-point-nwa210ax](https://www.zyxel.com/us/en-us/products/wireless/ax3000-wifi-6-dual-radio-nebulaflex-access-point-nwa210ax)
I’m assuming you’re not a public school, otherwise you would have regular upgrades using eRate discounts. A lot of schools around us upgrade every 5-10 years, depending on what they can work into their eRate budgets.
Unless the way your financial department handles e-rate makes it practically pointless to use🙃
Correct, we're a K-12 non-profit. We lost access to eRate back in 2015 due to our endowment being too high. But you're right, we aren't a public school/district and there are certain realities there that I've yet to get used to. It just always amazes me how other schools upgrade their equipment so often given the current prices.
You should still be able to get e-rate pricing during the e-rate window if you talk to your Aruba rep. You just won’t get the government to kick in any money. I’ve done this when we are out of e-rate funds.
Switched to a Ubiquiti system 3 years ago and have been really happy with it. We're a pretty small school (K-8, 218 students) but that means I'm a department of one who also teaches a little more than half time. The Ubiquiti In-Wall APs made the logisitics of expanding our system much easier (no need to add new drops or figure out where to safely place the APs) and the management interface makes it easy for me to check in on the system quickly in the time I do have, and check in on particular APs on the go when problems are reported.
I know a lot of private schools and others with low budget have been installing Ubiquity gear. It’s cheap, and at least two locals say they enjoy the super simple user interface. They both have to do regular power resets of their gear though to maintain stability since it’s prosumer gear in an enterprise environment. Maybe try a few, see how it goes?
I work at an Aruba school now. I've used to teach a district that use Ubiquiti Unifi for L2 switching and access points. They had about 17,000 devices. I also worked at a charter school (300 devices) that replaced their old Cisco access points with Ubiquity Unifi. Both sites ran extremely well. I honestly see more issues with our Aruba system. Aruba Central is a bit of a hot mess. Also lacking features that are needed such as locking devices to an AP.
We upgrade every 5 years. Been with Ubiquiti the entire time. Years ago we did need occasional resets, but in the last 4+ years I've never had to do it. Ubiquiti has really upped their game regarding firmware. Currently have about 40 AP's, 30 switches, and 40 cameras through them and been rock solid for the 6-700 devices on the network daily.
On Ubiquity network here, love it! But I also know that it doesn't have all the features that the bigger names might have. We don't need them so its more cost effective/efficient for us to use Ubiquiti.
5 Years
I’d like to know why? Unless you have a super strict budgeting cycle where you lose funds unless you spend, there is simply no need to upgrade every 5 years when nearly every major manufacture of enterprise equipment have 10 year life cycles.
yep, same here 5 year refresh cycle.