Upgrade VDX6740T-1G Recommended path and procedure

[Laura_Pineiro]

Hello,

I'm going to upgrade my cluster of VDX6740T-1G. From documentation, I found that I have to go one major upgrade at time. I have made this question a lot of time and also open a case asking for recommended path and it is not very clear (at least for me).

I'm at 4.1.3 version, so I had choosen this path:
4.1.3 to 5.0.2c with coldboot option
5.0.2c to 6.0.2f with coldboot option
6.0.2f to 7.0.1c with coldboot option
7.0.1c to 7.1.0b with coldboot option
7.1.0b to 7.2.0 with coldboot option
7.2.0 to 7.3.0 with coldboot option

The other thing is that I'm a little confused with the way I have to do the upgrade. Documentation said there's three ways to do it:
1. All devices at once
2. Odd/even approach
3. One device at a time

So, my question here is: if I use option 2 or 3 (as recommended for logical-chassis), is it possible that I loose at some point the remote access to one of the leaf nodes for example?

Lets say, I use the one by one approach and for some reason the VCS is not capable to came UP after some of the versions upgrade. If that happens, i will lost management access (sure I have a computer at the console port, but I'm trying to think in the worst scenario). Is it a way to check compatibility between versions?

Since I have to go through all this versions, what should be the best way to do it? all devices at once for each step? that way I'm assuring they came up with the same version...

Another things, there's a lot of possibilities with the command firmware upgrade... what is the recommended one?

Sorry to post all this questions, I'm newly to brocade and we had already some troubles with these devices. These VDX are used into our DataCenter, so they're very importants and I have to minimize the risk here.

Thanks in advance for your collaboration,

Laura

[Laura_Pineiro]

Thanks a lot Michael. In that case, I think will be fine at NOS 6.0.2. This version will be OK for now.

Thanks a lot again, your comments had been very helpfull for me. I hope everythings goes ok with my upgrade... First time are always hard 😉

Thanks again and have a nice day ahead!

[Yulia_Abitbul]

There is a little mistake there in document for NOS6.0.2,
Currently the latest and recommended version is 6.0.2h

[Michael_Morey]

Laura,

Historically, Legacy Brocade followed a method called "Target Path". While there are new releases all the time, they would recommend to upgrade to a specific code path unless there were features in a newer code that were needed. This is to ensure that the most stable version is recommended to customers in general.

Extreme has continued this recommendation style (it sounds like Ruckus/Arris has done the same). The official documentation for Extreme Network OS is here:
https://documentation.extremenetworks.com/networkos/HW/extreme-nos-target-path.pdf

I can understand that this document is confusing as it lists multiple versions. In my experience I like to see customers running the latest letter patch of NOS 6.0.2. If you are interested in IP Fabrics, then we would recommend to moving onto NOS 7, otherwise it is fine to remain on the NOS 6 release.

Thanks,

Mike Morey
Principal Technical Support Engineer

[Laura_Pineiro]

Thanks Yulia! 