Upgrade from 15.X to 21.X Questions

[Ken_Tucker]

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?

[Tony_Coombs]

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.

[Eric_Burke]

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

[Ken_Tucker]

Thank you also Eric.

[Ken_Tucker]

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.