topic RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions in ExtremeSwitching (EXOS/Switch Engine)

Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Ken_Tucker — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:13:00 GMT

I am adding another stack at one of our locations. The new switches used in the new stack our running 21.1.1.4 patch1-2. The other two stacks at the location are running 15.6.2.12 patch1-6, and 15.5.3.4 patch1-6. I would like to upgrade the XOS in the other stacks during the outage, to the same version as the new stack (21.1.1.4 patch1-2), or higher if you recommend another version.

My questions are:

1. Will the new version need to be installed on each stack slot, or just once to the stack. Will each node need to be rebooted separately, or as a whole stack?

2. Are there any known issues upgrading from the above versions to the new one? There are no special configurations in the switches, just VLANs and IP forwarding. On stack is a transit node in an EAPS ring.

3. SSH is installed and enabled, SSH used to be a separate download and install. Since it is now part of the XOS in version 21.X, are there any additional steps, or will it be enabled from the existing configuration? Will a new key need to be generated after the reboot?

4. If there are issues that we are unable to resolve during our outage window, are there, or will there be, any issues reverting to the currently running XOS?

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Patrick_Voss — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:22:00 GMT

Hello Ken,

1. No you can treat a stack like it is a standalone. They can be rebooted as a whole.
2. Not that we have seen.
3. SSH should remain enabled. You can check this through the "show management" command. If not then you can just enable ssh to get it running.
4. You should not run into any issue reverting.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Henrique — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:22:00 GMT

Regarding the question #4, you should take a look in both articles below:

Cannot log into EXOS switch after downgrading from EXOS 16 to an earlier release

Tacacs users cannot log into a switch after downgrading to 15.7 or earlier from 16.1 or later

Please let us know if you have any question regarding mentioned articles.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Ken_Tucker — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:22:00 GMT

Thanks for the reply. Question regarding the information in the links. Since the current passwords will not be changing right away, is it safe to say that they will remain in an MD5 hash both upgrade and downgrade?

Thanks again.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Patrick_Voss — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:22:00 GMT

Yes. This issue was related to newly created accounts.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Henrique — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:22:00 GMT

As already mentioned by Patrick, if you create a new account or if you change the password to "admin" then you will face this issue when downgrading from 21.x to 15.7 or earlier releases.

I would recommend you to setup the failsafe account anyway.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Stephane_Grosj1 — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:22:00 GMT

The upgrade method I'd recommend is to save your initial config in 2 separate files. That way a rollback will be possible with an unmodified config file.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Eric_Burke — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:37:00 GMT

Ken,

Just make sure that the version you're upgrading to has the SSH fix in it. We had a couple of instances with the base (not patched) code and there was an issue with SSH hanging up during save/show operations. I believe it's been fixed, but I'm not sure which patch level fixes it. Perhaps one of the Extreme team folks can confirm (patch 1-5 maybe)?

Eric

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Patrick_Voss — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:37:00 GMT

I would recommend always going with the latest patch available. They do not add any new features in the patches and they all should be fixes.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Ken_Tucker — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:37:00 GMT

Thank you for the reply. When I went to download the update i noticed that the version that came pre-loaded on the new switches patch1-2 was listed as "Not Recommended" , so I will be updating them as well. Thanks again for your reply.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Ken_Tucker — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:37:00 GMT

Thank you also Eric.

RE: Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

Tony_Coombs — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 13:11:00 GMT

Before you try the upgrade, one other tip is to check the 21.1 release notes as some of our older Summits (excluding G2 and X770 switches) that are supported in 15.6.2.12 patch1-6, and 15.5.3.4 are not supported in the EXOS 21.1.

Also, you cannot mix these switches in the same stack as a switch that is running 21.1 - all switches in a stack must run the same OS version.