The Aruba CX Mobile App has recently been released to enable low-touch deployment of the 8xxx range of ArubaOS-CX switches. This is facilitated via a Bluetooth USB dongle.
New CX switches such as the 8325 will ship with a dongle in most regions (as always, there is paperwork to do regarding homologation, emissions, etc). New shipments of the 8400 and 8320 may also start getting a dongle.
Bluetooth USB Dongle
If you already have an 8320 or 8400, you can also try it out. The 8xxx switches should work with many variants of bluetooth dongle; YMMV:
- recommended: a model based on the Broadcom BCM20702A0
- cheapy one from eBay/Amazon/Corner store: the one I bought was based on BCM20702
Setup
Useful commands
show usb
show bluetooth
Use
Now you can launch the app and get stuck in. For a new device, you would deploy a previously created template config.
My switch already has a working config, so I had to log in with the existing credentials. Multiple elements can be configured from the mobile GUI (eg NTP, interfaces), or you can view the CLI directly. I would go and get my laptop rather than use my phone if I wanted to do anything serious at the CLI, but a decent tablet would be OK. The point is, you can do it right there.
The locator LED (orange, far right) turned on from the app.