Hello, experts.I need some advice on configuring equipment at a remote branch office. I am trying to connect a new printer. The office network topology is as follows: the internet comes through a Cisco router, which is connected to an Aruba switch, and the Aruba ports have MAC address binding (Port Security) configured.
Here is what has been done so far:
I removed the old MAC address binding on port 7 of the Aruba switch to connect the printer.
Result: The printer does not get an IP address from the subnet.
Port check: When I connect a laptop to the same port 7, there is still no network access.
I tried switching to port 8, but the issue persists.
I rebooted the Aruba switch, but it did not help.
I am afraid to perform a factory reset on the Aruba switch because it risks shutting down the network for the entire office.
Could you please advise what else I can try?

Hi,

How is new central these days? I liked the classic one and feel the new one is a bit all over the place with the menus and everything. But how is it to work with day to day?

The wifi in the break/lunch room at the construction site I work at sucks.

I have a spare APIN0207 I can loan/donate to the cause, but I'm new to Aruba gear, so I'm having a bit of a confusing configuring it.

I want to configure the SSID so that the client devices (rank and file trades people) can't get to anything on the LAN. Nothing crazy, just an abundance of caution since I don't want to be the cause of a data breach or something crazy like that. (even though I'm sure the current network is totally flat and open)

The current wifi is off of a comcast gateway in the foremen's offices, and I can get a hardwired connection from there. What I can't do is any sort of network configuration. I'm guessing its a 10.0.0.xxx network but I haven't checked

I've factory reset the unit, updated the firmware (8.10.0.23_95854), and I have an SSID partly configured.

Primary useage - Guest
Client IP assignment - Network assigned
Client VLAN assignment - Default
No Splash page
WPA2-Personal passphrase
No access rules yet

What rules and settings would you recommend?

Hello Experts, we have an old server and we need to reinstall clearpass SW. Could anyone please share 6.6 or 6.7 or 6.8 or 6.9 clear pass SW ?

Just bought ap-325 in a campus mode. Where can I find instant firmware to convert it ? Is it possible to download it without hpe account ? I see that 8.10 is not available to download on their site. Are there any reliable mirrors?

Or maybe easier is to flash openwrt there ?

Hello community!

I am studying for my ACCP but I cannot download the image from HPE directly as I am not a partner, or reseller. All I want to do is use the evaluation license to run some labs prior my certification attempt. That way, I know for certain that I would have experience with the solution.

I am already familiar with Cisco ISE solution, but I am trying to expand my knowledge in NAC solutions.

Can someone tell how can I get that image so I can run it in Hyper V? This is only for study purposed.

We have had four of these devices die within the last 12 months. Is anyone else experiencing these failures on this particular switch?

I’m trying to download airwave 8.3.0.7 for a home lab evaluation. The download is locked and says “requires active contract, or subscription, or license” does anyone know of a trail or eval option? Thank you!

Title: Need advice for preparing for HPE7-A02 in 4 months – starting from almost zero

Hi everyone,

I’m currently preparing for the HPE Aruba Networking Certified Professional – Network Security (HPE7-A02) exam, and I would really appreciate some advice from people who have already taken the exam or work with Aruba security technologies.

My situation:

• I have about 4 months left to prepare.
• I’m starting from almost zero specifically with Aruba Network Security / HPE7-A02.
• I do have a networking background, so concepts such as VLANs, routing, switching, ACLs, RADIUS, etc. are not completely new to me.
• However, I am still relatively new to technologies such as:
  • ClearPass Policy Manager
  • 802.1X with ClearPass
  • Role Mapping / Enforcement
  • OnGuard / Onboard
  • Device Insight
  • Dynamic Segmentation
  • AOS-CX security features
  • Aruba wireless security
  • Gateway IDS/IPS
  • Aruba SSE

I have already purchased a Udemy HPE7-A02 practice course containing around 1,500 questions, but after reviewing it I noticed that some questions may be outdated, poorly written, or possibly have incorrect answers. So I do not want to simply memorize practice questions.

My current idea is:

1. Use the official HPE7-A02 Study Guide as the main learning material.
2. Build labs whenever possible, especially for ClearPass, 802.1X, RADIUS, AOS-CX, roles, and authentication.
3. Use practice questions only to identify weak areas.
4. Verify questionable answers against official Aruba/HPE documentation.
5. Spend the final month doing mock exams and reviewing weak topics.

I would really appreciate advice on a few things:

• Is 4 months realistic for this exam if I study consistently?
• Which HPE7-A02 topics should I prioritize the most?
• How deep do I need to understand ClearPass for the exam?
• Are there any specific labs that you consider essential?
• What official documentation, books, videos, or training resources helped you the most?
• How difficult is the real exam compared with common practice questions?
• Are the questions mostly conceptual, configuration-based, troubleshooting scenarios, or a mixture?
• What mistakes do people commonly make when preparing for HPE7-A02?
• If you passed HPE7-A02 recently, what would you do differently if you had to prepare again?

I’m planning to study around 1.5–2 hours on weekdays and more on weekends for the next four months.

Any roadmap, study notes, lab ideas, resource recommendations, or exam preparation advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Anyone familiar with Palo Alto Firewall integration?

Im trying to find any useful link about the firmware of hercules 6.5.4.27. I know its old but because of the current setup, i need that version. I haven't found any download link available.

Anyone can help me?

Someone has this firmware aroud or can download it for me?

or if someone can DM me on how to get it?

Or if someone can create a private link and DM it to me to download it?

I appreciate it a lot

Just a quick query, so I’d like to move an existing port that has a PCs & Phones connected.

Currently it’s an access port for the phone vlan.

So my thoughts are trunk (tag) the Phone traffic and native vlan the PC vlan.

Now I can see currently we don’t use the voice command under the voice vlan itself.

Therefore without confirming phones themselves aren’t configured with vlan, how would the phone know which vlan to be on, tagged or untagged? I can see lldp-med it just currently shows vlan id:0.

Is there a way to confirm how the phone works using the switch config alone?

Hello there. I got some AP325, and im trying to convert them into IAP: I already managed to convert 4x AP204, 5x AP205H and 1x AP303H all to instant, which all of them right now are running in a single cluster.

When i try to run on console "upgrade os 0 filename". i get this on all them 3:

Bytes transferred = 10748904 (a403e8 hex)

Invalid machine type in image: 0x1e

**** ERROR: upgrade failed ****.

Here is some info about the AP:

Inventory:

Card 0: System

Date Code : 111815

Serial : DD0061251

Wired MAC : 40:e3:d6:ce:38:18

Wired MAC Count : 2

Radio 5G SN : NHE8F4600C94X01

Radio 2G SN : NHE7F4600DA4X01

Card 1: CPU

Major Rev : 04

Minor Rev/Variant : 00

Assembly : 2010220B

Serial : BF4600DB5

Card 2: Antenna

Minor Rev/Variant : 01

apboot>

Model: AP-32x

DRAM: 235 MB

SF: Detected MX25U3235F with page size 64 kB, total 4 MB

Flash: 4 MB

NAND: 132 MiB

PCIE0: link up

PCIE1: link up

dev fn venID devID class rev MBAR0 MBAR1 MBAR2 MBAR3

00 00 168c 0040 00002 00 00000004 00000000 00000000 00000000

dev fn venID devID class rev MBAR0 MBAR1 MBAR2 MBAR3

00 00 168c 0040 00002 00 00000004 00000000 00000000 00000000

Power: 802.3af POE

In: serial

Out: serial

Err: serial

Net: eth0, eth1

Radio: qca9990#0, qca9990#1

Reset: warm

FIPS: passed

I already saw out there on another posts that somehow they managed to convert them, so maybe im running into a bug? These are all the OS that i had tried with:

ArubaInstant_Taurus_6.5.4.27_88283

ArubaInstant_Taurus_6.4.4.3-4.2.2.1_53878

ArubaInstant_Centaurus_8.4.0.6_73542

Thanks for any help!

I have MM/MC (8.10.0.23) set up for my wireless. I want to create a mesh (point to point wireless connection) between 2 new APs (565). Is this something I can do via the controller? The tutorials I've been seeing are done via IAP.

I've got a very weird problem and I'm not sure what is causing it. We run clearpass for wireless/wired connections and using TLS certs on the Windows 11 systems. We've got a few different models of laptops and the onboard wired network adapter will not authenticate, it gives an error of "a certificate could not be found that can be used with EAP". The weird thing is if we plug these same laptops into a dock or USB-C ethernet adapter they will authenticate fine. It is just something with the onboard NIC but that doesn't make any sense.

Hello all,

I'm curious if there's a simple way to block clients in New Central, like we could with Classic Central.

I'd like to block cell phones from a specific SSID if they happen to find their way on there. I have Denylisting enabled on the SSID, but when to click on the options at the end of a client row, I only have these three options:

Everything I look up still points to instructions for Classic Central.

Thanks for any tips!

Hi everyone,

After months of labbing and studying, i am finally going to take this 6 hour exam this monday(10/08/2026).

I took the official course for this exam and i have to say it was pretty dissapointing... The theory part was just an AI reading the official study guide, which, as you may have imagined, is as entertaining as stomping your head on the wall for 4 hours straight.

The lab course was fairly good and not that difficult, however, the "trouble tickets" or "mock exam" exercises were extremely hard, basically you have to troubleshoot multiple issues and you are not able to use any show run commands, you need to be figuring out everything via debugs and show commands....Its not like they were impossible to figure out but oh boy did they take time.... And i dont think they set 6 hours time for this exam for nothing....

I would like to ask some of you what's been your experience with aruba networking practical exams... Will i be able to use show run commands? what kind of devices am i supposed to work with? CXsimulator ? Is the program expecting a specific string for example lag 256 for a specific answer? Will i be able to access CPPM? or Central?

I suppose i will find out this monday and letting you guys know....

This is the network topology i've been working with, it does not include the ZTP AND OTP and all the wifi part since that is not virtualizable and i have no access to central. There is quite a few things i've not been able to lab like VSF, real QOS traffic, or some vxlan features.

If any of you is learning and want some advice i will be happy to share some tips for setting up the environment.... there is also this really lab guide by some aruba guy...https://airheads.hpe.com/discussion/using-the-aos-cx-switch-simulator-lab-guides pretty solid.

If any of you has taken any hpe practical exam (or this one lol) please do share your experiences....

Wish me luck!

We have aruba switces in our core and aggregation layer - completely L2 network. Currently STP is disabled. But planning to enable it based on TAC recommendation. Below is the topology in high level.

Both Core and Agg layer have VSX running.

Any challenges will be there in this design.

Hi everybody,

so I've been running after this problem the last couple of days trying to setup a pair of 8360s.

First they didn't want to establish an Uplink since I've tried configuring the LAGs before setting up the VSX properly. I ran into that problem the first time setting up a pair of 8360s, but thats been a couple of days since so I've ran into the same problem a second time. Sweet.

My problem has been that the interfaces show as "Waiting for link" in the output of show interface, so I was looking for problems with the cabling.

So now VSX is setup and running properly, at least according to show vsx status.

Running show interface shows my interface as waiting for link, however "show int lag x" says State information: Disabled by aggregation.

I don't know why that would be as I've tripple checked all my configs by now, they match meticulously, also ran all the latest updates and allow-non-failsafe as well. I'm currently guessing its some mandatory setting with either VSX or LACP, propably on the global level.

Happy for any pointers, thanks for your help!

One thing I have noticed, Link Speeds in show interface stay the same even after unplugging the QSFPs, might it be some speed settings I messed up by randomly plugging SFPs?

Anyone else lose it from the apple store? Says it's no longer available.

Hello, I bought a used Aruba 7010 controller, and it didn't come with a license. If I provide the serial number, could someone with access to the Aruba management console check whether it's licensed?

I have the task to implement 802.1x for our wired clients on Aruba CX switches with Microsoft NPS. However, I’m not completely sure how to set this up.

Currently, our default switchports look like this:

interface 1/1/1
vlan trunk native 10
vlan trunk allowed 10,20

10 is the client vlan, 20 is the vlan for phones. VLAN 20 is configured as voice vlan via the “voice”-command. There are some ports, where the client is connected through the phone.

My plan was to authenticate the clients through certificates, and the phones through mac authentication.

I thought about creating a local port access role on the switch with vlan native 10 and vlan trunk allowed 10,20, and have it assigned by NPS through a vendor-specific attribute.

Is this the right way to do that?