Planning and Provisioning Devices

Floorplans provide the capability to plan buildings, floors, and location for device provisioning before the actual deployment. You can create a floor plan and add devices to the floor plan.

The planning and provisioning workflow includes the following procedures:

• Creating a Floor Plan
• Importing a Floor Plan
• Modifying Floor Plan Properties
• Adding Devices to the Floor Plan

Creating a Floor Plan

Floorplans allow you to add, modify, and import a floor plan background image file. When importing RFRadio Frequency. RF refers to the electromagnetic wave frequencies within a range of 3 kHz to 300 GHz, including the frequencies used for communications or Radar signals. plans ensure that the devices from the device catalog are included.

To create a new floor plan, complete the following steps:

1. In the Network Operations app, set the filter to a Site.
   The dashboard context for the selected site is displayed.
2. Under Manage > Overview, click Floorplans. The Floorplans dashboard is displayed.
3. Click Add Floors. The Floor Plan tab is displayed.

   Figure 1  Floorplans Dashboard

   

4. Click Edit in the slide out pane on the right.
5. Click New Floorplan. You can also add the floor plan by right-clicking on the center gray area and click New Floorplan. The New Floorplan pop-up window is displayed. The New Floorplan pop-up window is displayed:
6. Click Choose File and locate a floor plan image file from your local file system. You can import the floor plan image file in the jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp, pdf, png, dwg, and svg format.
7. Assign a floor name and a floor number in the Floor name and Floor number text boxes, respectively.
8. Click Save.
9. You can define new floor by clicking the Define New Floor option on the top right corner.
10. The Define New Floor includes the following option:
    1. Scale—Shows the dimensions of the floor.
    2. Region—Allows you to define floor plan boundary and planning region.
    3. CAD Layer—Allows you to import walls from the CAD file.
    4. Access Points—Allows you to add the access point's to the floor plan.
11. Click Next button after you set the Scale, Region, and CAD layer for the floor.
12. To add a planned access point, under Access Points > Planned APs, select the device type from the Type drop-down menu.
13. In the Count field, enter the number of devices to add to the new floor.
14. Click and drag the Deployment Type slider bar to adjust data rates for a high density or low density environment.
15. Optionally, click the Advance link to configure the advance deployment options:
    1. Service Level—Select Speed or Signal to plan coverage by adjusting the data rate requirements (speed) or AP signal strength settings. Click Calculate AP Count to recalculate the suggested number of APs based on these settings.
    2. Client Density—In the Max Clients field, set the anticipated number of clients that will be stationed in the floor. In the Clients Per AP field, enter the maximum number of clients supported by each radio. Click Calculate AP Count to recalculate the suggested number of APs based on these settings.
16. Click Add APs to Floorplan to add the planned APs to the floor.
17. Click Finish.
18. To remove the planned device from the floor plan, right-click on that device and click Remove.

Importing a Floor Plan

To import a floor plan exported from AirWave or Aruba Central, complete the following steps:

1. In the Network Operations app, set the filter to a Site.
   The dashboard context for the selected site is displayed.
2. Under Manage > Overview, click Floorplans. The Floorplans dashboard is displayed.
3. Click the Import menu option.

   Below is an example figure of Import menu option:

   Figure 2  Floorplans Import Option

   

4. Click Choose File and select the floor plan zip file to import.
5. Click Upload. When an import is complete, the UI displays a notification to alert the user.

Modifying Floor Plan Properties

To edit the properties of an existing floor plan, complete the following steps:

1. In the Network Operations app, set the filter to a Site.
   The dashboard context for the selected site is displayed.
2. Under Manage > Overview, click Floorplans. The Floorplans dashboard is displayed.
3. Click Edit to modify the properties. For more information, see Customizing the Floorplans View.
4. Click Save.

Adding Devices to the Floor Plan

You can add planned devices or devices available in Aruba Central, to a floor plan. Planned devices are used to simulate AP behaviors (heatmap coverage) on the floor plan, instead of real devices. You can match and replace planned devices with real devices that are available in Aruba Central.

To add the already deployed devices to the floor plan, complete the following steps:

1. In the Network Operations app, set the filter to a Site.
   The dashboard context for the selected site is displayed.
2. Under Manage > Overview, click Floorplans. The Floorplans dashboard is displayed.
3. Click Edit. In case of multiple floors, select the floor from the drop-down list and click Edit.
4. Click the Add Deployed Devices. A list of devices is displayed.
5. Expand the group containing the APs which need to be provisioned on this floor plan. Note that by default, devices that have already been added to Floorplans are hidden. To show them, clear the Hide APs that are already added check box at the bottom of the list.
6. Click and drag an AP to its proper location on the floor.
7. To remove a device from the floor plan, right-click that device and then click Remove.

To add planned devices when creating a new floor plan, complete the following steps:

1. In the Network Operations app, set the filter to a Site.
   The dashboard context for the selected site is displayed.
2. Under Manage > Overview, click Floorplans. The Floorplans dashboard is displayed.
3. Click Edit. In case of multiple floors, select the floor from the drop-down list and click Edit.
4. Click Add Planned Devices and select a device type (model) from the list of available devices.
5. Click and drag the device to the desired location on the floor.
6. To replace a planned AP with an AP that is available in Aruba Central, click Auto-Match Planned Devices from the Action tab.
   

7. To auto-match devices, ensure that you edit the device name or MACMedia Access Control. A MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on a network. address of the planned AP to match the name or MAC address of the AP added to Aruba Central.

   To remove a planned device from the floor plan, right-click on that device and then click Remove.