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Hitless Upgrade on BD8810

Hitless Upgrade on BD8810

Network_Enginee
New Contributor
Good day all! I'm new to Extreme and reading the 15.4 EXOS Concepts Guide I had a question on Hitless Upgrades. I think I completely understand the steps/concepts of Hitless Upgrades except one mention in the documentation:

"If you have a BlackDiamond 8800 series switch and the new ExtremeXOS image supports hitlessupgrade but is not compatible with the current running I/O module image (the I/O version numbers do not match), you cannot perform a hitless upgrade."

Below is the output from my BD 8810. We're upgrading to bd8800-15.5.4.2-patch1-5.xos.

Does that statement in the documentation apply to me? Does that basically say the cards in Slots 1, 2, 4, 8 and 10 in my chassis have to be running same code levels?

A.1 # sh ver


Image : ExtremeXOS version 15.2.3.2 v1523b2-patch1-10 by release-manager
on Wed Jun 5 10:28:14 EDT 2013
BootROM : 1.0.4.5
Diagnostics : 1.19
A.2 # sh switch

SysName: XXX
SysLocation:
SysContact: support@extremenetworks.com, +1 888 257 3000
System MAC: 00:04:96:52:54:21
System Type: BD-8810

SysHealth check: Enabled (Normal)
Recovery Mode: All
System Watchdog: Enabled

Current Time: Wed Sep 9 11:24:23 2015
Timezone: [Auto DST Enabled] GMT Offset: -300 minutes, name is EST.
DST of 60 minutes is currently in effect, name is EDT.
DST begins every second Sunday March at 2:00
DST ends every first Sunday November at 2:00

Boot Time: Thu Jun 26 12:14:48 2014
Boot Count: 10
Next Reboot: None scheduled
System UpTime: 439 days 23 hours 9 minutes 35 seconds

Slot: MSM-A * MSM-B
------------------------ ------------------------
Current State: MASTER BACKUP (In Sync)

Image Selected: secondary secondary
Image Booted: secondary secondary
Primary ver: 12.5.2.6 12.5.2.6
Secondary ver: 15.2.3.2 15.2.3.2
patch1-10 patch1-10

Config Selected: primary.cfg primary.cfg
Config Booted: primary.cfg primary.cfg

primary.cfg Created by ExtremeXOS version 15.2.3.2
774990 bytes saved on Thu Jul 30 14:57:44 2015

Thank you all!!

Garry Frizzell

edit: Serial numbers removed by moderator
6 REPLIES 6

EtherMAN
Contributor III
Quick real world about hitless and the 8900's ... Read in depth as there are some things that will not be 100% hitless. Eaps Mcast come to mind... It is a very good way like the guys said to do patch upgrades inside major revs... 15.1.xx but not going from 15.1 to even 15.2... The line cards do not upgrade till they reboot. If you have card redundancy you can in theory do the msm's and then one card at a time .... Very lengthy process as you can imagine ... In my 18 years using Extreme gear I can count on one hand the number of times we elected to go hitless instead of scheduling a window and having a 3 to 5 minute outage... We have had and still have quite a few chassis and stacks through the years so I agree it is best to reboot if you can... If you have never done a hitless upgrade you best have a spare and practice as it has to be done perfect and in the right sequence... Loosing the console and waiting for it to come back alive is scary so doing a trail run lets you see how long it takes and what to expect.

Paul_Russo
Extreme Employee
Sorry Garry I mis-read your versions you are going from to to.

In my testing in the past if the switch allows for the hitless upgrade it has worked well in the past.

Sorry for the confusion from my post.

P

Paul_Russo
Extreme Employee
Hey Garry

Normally we only recommend trying a hitless upgrade for versions of code that are minor in their revisions. For example 15.x to 15.y. The reason is that going between major versions may need to change the kernel on the I/O modules.

In my opinion I would not plan on this being a hitless upgrade as you are moving from a 12.5 build to a 15.2 code. If I remember correctly the code should notify you if you can do a hitless upgrade.

I hope that helps

P

Network_Enginee
New Contributor
Ok, thanks so much for your thoughts Drew! These are datacenter core switches critical to our products being up 24/7 so was trying to do my best to prevent any downtime at all. We do have dual core BD 8810s but the Hitless approach really seemed like a great option to ensure even a fail over (running VRRP too) wouldn't have to happen to the other core Extreme BD.
GTM-P2G8KFN