How to take backup of cisco WLC 5508

1. HOW TO TAKE BACKUP OF
CISCO WLC 5508
www.netprotocolxpert.in

2. 1 – BACKUP CONFIG DIRECTLY FROM
CONTROLLER GUI
• This is the easiest and most direct method where you download the config directly
from the controller to your tftp server.
• On the GUI of your wireless controller navigate to Commands > Upload File
• You will now be looking at this screen

3. • Change the IP address to the IP address of your TFTP server and change the File
Name to your required backup filename.
• Click the download button at the top right
• Your WLC backup will be downloaded to your TFTP server

4. 2 – BACKUP CONFIG DIRECTLY FROM
CONTROLLER CLI
• SSH to your controller, log the output and issue the following commands.
(Cisco-Wireless-5508) >config paging disable
• This command will disable paging and enable the entire config to be captured
without hitting enter
• Now enter the command show run-config
(Cisco-Wireless-5508) >show run-config
• Press Enter to continue...
• This will display the entire config and log it to where you specified earlier.

5. 3 – BACKUP CISCO WLC USING PRIME
INFRASTRUCTURE
• To automate the process of taking wlc backups you can utilise Cisco Prime
Infrastructure, Prime will initiate the process above but on a scheduled basis. The
backup config can either be stored on the internal ftp server in Prime or to an
external TFTP or FTP server.
• By default scheduled wireless controller backup is disabled. To enable this
process go to Administration>Background Tasks

6. • Scroll down to Other Background Tasks and find Controller Configuration Backup
You will see this is disabled and set to run on a schedule of every day at 22:00

7. • To enable this click on the task and tick the enable box

8. • You will also see I have FTP server selected.
• This leads onto the next step which is to enable the FTP functionality in Prime
• Prime can backup the controller to it’s internal FTP server or an external server. For
this post we are only going to cover the internal server.
• By default the FTP Server is disabled and needs to be enabled from
Administration > System Settings > Server Settings
• Once here you can see that FTP server is disabled

9. • Select the Enable Radio button and then click Save
• This change will require a restart of Prime Infrastructure
• To do this SSH to Prime and issue the command ncs stop
• ciscoprime/admin# ncs stop
• Stopping Prime Infrastructure...
• This may take a few minutes...
• Prime Infrastructure successfully shutdown.

10. • Once it has shutdown issue the command ncs start
• ciscoprime/admin# ncs start
• Starting Prime Infrastructure...
• This may take a while (10 minutes or more) ...
• Prime Infrastructure started successfully.
• This whole process should take no longer than 10 minutes (depending on your environment)
• The final step is to set an ftp user password
• You do this on the CLI with the command
ncs password ftpuser admin password <yourpasswordhere>
• Then make sure these details are entered into controller configuration backup task window earlier.
• This backup should run every night at 22:00 to test the task tick the box next to the backup task in

11. • Administration>Background Tasks
• Then top right of the screen select Select a Command > Execute Now – then click
Go

12. • If you go into the task again you can view the status – it should say Success
• You can now view this backup directly in the Prime CLI using the command dir disk:/ftp
• Directory of disk:/ftp
• 18186 Mar 24 2016 12:12:49 10_0_0_150_160324_1212.cfg
• Usage for disk: filesystem
• 1220194304 bytes total used
• 71686205440 bytes free
• 76870459392 bytes available
• ciscoprime/admin#

13. • This file can now viewed and downloaded using a standard ftp client – for this post I
am using Filezilla
• The final option I am going to show here is backing up a cisco wireless lan controller
using Kiwi Cattools

14. 4 – BACKUP CISCO WLC CONFIG USING KIWI CATTOOLS
• To backup a cisco
wireless lan controller
configuration using Kiwi
Cattools it depends on
what version you are
running.
• For this post I am
running version 3.7
• Step1: Define the Cisco
Wireless Controller as a
new device using the
values below

15. • The key step
for this is in
the Passwords
Tab – you
need to define
username/pass
word under
AAA

16. • Next step is to define an activity if not already being used you need to
use Device.Backup.TFTP

17. • In this Activity add your device and on the Options tab change File to write to TFTP
Server to config
• Run this task and you should generate a backup file in your specified folder.