Why use AP Priming Filters
- You can configure all APs on your Catalyst WLC with the desired HA settings.
- You can configure thousands of APs with a few CLI commands.
- Cisco Catalyst Center GUI only supports 100 APs per operation:
- You must manually select APs in batches of 100, which is slow and error-prone.
- Using CLI and filters is faster, more scalable, and less error-prone.
How to use AP Priming Filters
Official documentation and references:
- AP Priming and Filter-Based HA WLCs (17.9) — Cisco Configuration Guide
- Cisco Live 2024: BRKEWN-2339 — Slide 40 (AP Priming Filters example)
- Cisco Live 2023: BRKEWN-2846 — Slides 28-35 (Advanced AP Priming examples)
Note: This feature appears to be supported in version 17.9.2 or later.
The three required components:
- AP priming profile — Defines the AP-level HA configuration.
- AP priming filter — Determines which APs match which priming profile.
- AP priming filter priority — Controls the order of filter application when multiple filters exist (similar to site tag filters).
Example: 9800 WLC CLI Configuration for AP Priming Filters
Configure your AP priming profile
We define the Priming-Profile as follows:
wireless profile ap priming Priming-Profile primary PRIMARY_WLC_NAME PRIMARY_WLC_IP secondary SECONDARY_WLC_NAME SECONDARY_WLC_IP
Configure your AP priming filter
We create a filter named Filter-Prime-Profile:
I’m using ap name-regex - because all my APs contain ‘-‘ in the name. Example AP name: SITE-Floor#-AP#.
Yours may differ. There is no ‘*’ to match all APs but you can use this workaround.
ap filter name Filter-Prime-Profile type priming profile Priming-Profile ap name-regex -
Set the AP priming filter priority
I chose to start at priority 510 to avoid interfering with our AP site tag regex.
You can also leverage this for more advanced HA setups — for example, create different priming profiles for 8×5 vs 24×7 sites, and prioritize them accordingly.
ap filter priority 510 filter-name Filter-Prime-Profile
Verify configuration
You can safely add these configurations in advance — they do nothing until you enable priming-override.
To verify which APs have filters applied:
show ap name APSITE-1AP-1 config general | sec Priming
Example output:
WLC#show ap name APSITE-1AP-1 config general | sec Priming Priming Profile : Priming-Profile Priming Override : Disabled Priming Source : Filter Priming Filter name : Filter-Prime-Profile
Enable the priming override
Enabling this will apply your HA configuration to matching APs. Be aware: this may cause a temporary outage as APs rejoin the primary WLC. Make sure to disable the override before doing any N+1 AP upgrades as it will cause issues.
wireless profile ap priming Priming-Profile priming-override
Results
After applying priming-override, APs will adopt the new configuration within seconds to minutes. I successfully applied this to 3000+ APs — they migrated to their new primary WLC as specified.