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?

[Ronald_Dvorak]

Welcome to the 1% 😉

Regarding the APs that are connected via NAT, you are correct, software upgrade via that link still doesn't work.

I've done some troubleshooting long time ago and the issue is that the AP doesn't use the tunnel to connect to the controller for the software upgrade.
Instead a new TFTP connection is setup and unfortunately the internal IP is used instead of the internet address which isn't reachable from the remote site.

As that isn't solved till now I assume it's very deep in the code and not easy to fix.

[Steve_Ballantyn]

Just completed the upgrade. I decided to do it late, but not 2:00AM late.  Didn't have any issues.

The method I took was:

1. Disabled Fast Failover on both controllers.
2. Upgraded Controller #1 (all AP's immediately jumped to controller #2).
3. Waited for Controller #1 upgrade to complete.
4. Upgraded Controller #2 (all AP's jumped to controller #1)
5. Watched all the AP's upgrade off of Controller #1, and waited for Controller #2 to come back.
6. Done!

The only issue I have ever had with upgrades is with my AP's at remote sites where I am doing a B@AP and also a B@C. Reason being - I want the guest network there to use the local cable modem bandwidth. But in doing so, the upgrades fail because they cannot TFTP the new firmware down through a "NAT connection" (over VPN). Something about the fact that it's connecting to the controller using a public IP address. But then skipping to the internal IP address and failing when it comes to TFTP the file down.

Anyway, the fix I have been using is to pre-upgrade the firmware manually on each of those AP's (and then not reboot them). I wrote a series of shell scripts which work pretty good. To be honest, I am not sure that this is required any more. But I am not going to skip this step to find out and have to drive all over the State in the wee-hours of the morning to fix it.

[Jeremy_Gibbs]

I don't think you will have issues upgrading. I honestly have NEVER had a botched upgrade.

[Steve_Ballantyn]

Thanks for the advice guys. I *do* have Fast Failover enabled at the moment. But with the problems I have experienced with the present version of firmware, it's not really doing the trick.

Perhaps I should disable Fast Failover to make this upgrade smoother. Then re-enable it after everything is up and running again.