Upgrading firmware on C5210 availability pair (order of install)

[Steve_Ballantyn]

I have two C5210 controllers in an availability pair. I need to perform an upgrade and this will be the first one I have done since the pair went up.

According to an Extreme KB ...

In a High Availability pair when upgrading the Extreme Wireless Controller Local AP's will fail over to the backup controller and show as Foreign. In order to upgrade the AP's they must be manually released back to the Primary/Local controller. Check to see AP upgrade behavior settings under the AP menu/ Global Controlled upgrade to manually upgrade AP's Option 2 Always upgrade AP to default image (overrides Controlled Upgrade settings)

I normally do this at 2:00AM and sleep through it! But if I manually have to move the AP's back to the other controller - that is a no go.

Can I do this ??

1. Upgrade the secondary controller right now (which presently has zero local AP's, and 100% foreign).
2. Download and *schedule* the upgrade for the primary controller at 2:00AM.
3. When the AP's try to fly over to the secondary controller, they will be forced into an upgrade.

Or - is there a preferred order of doing this?

[Jeremy_Gibbs]

1. Fail ALL of the Local APs to the other controller by selecting the check box for ALL local APs and choosing "Release".
2. Upgrade controller number 1
3. Fail all the APs back once its back up, including all the APs from the other controller
4. Upgrade other controller
5. Fail foreign APs back to other controller once it reboots
6. Under global setting under APs, create a maintenance cycle to reboot the APs from 2AM with a 2 hour duration.

[Ronald_Dvorak]

#1 will only work if fastfailover is enabled,
That is the big question, which mode is used as that makes a big difference

[Ronald_Dvorak]

The right order would be...

- upgrade controller#1 now, APs will failover
- schedule upgrade of controller#2 at 2am = the APs will failover to controller#1 and upgrade (if you don't use fastfailover).

The reboot of the AP on the local controller is AFAIK only required if fastfailover is enabled.

[Ronald_Dvorak]

And I'm sure 99% of them have no idea how it works and only enabled it because of the cool name :-0

[Craig_Guilmette]

True but 99% of our customers use fastfailover.