7100/S/N-Series Upgrade fails with "image is not High-Availability Upgrade compatible with active image" message

[FAQ_User]

Article ID: 16187

Products
7100-Series, firmware 7.91.02.0006 and higher
S-Series, firmware 7.72.01.0021 and higher
N-Series DFE, firmware 7.62.02.0004 and higher

Changes
Have configured High Availability Upgrade default settings to always use HAU:
'

set boot high-availability default-mode always

'.
Attempting to perform a standard firmware upgrade because the old/new firmware have incompatible HAU keys (16129).

Symptoms
No firmware upgrade takes place.
The system remains running the old firmware version.
The new firmware downloads onto the switch but the system does not boot onto it.
NetSight Inventory Manager, if used, reports an error after firmware download: "

code:

Device Reported-Error (Check Device HAU Mode/Firmware Compability)

".
'

code:

dir

' command output shows that the new firmware has not been selected to be loaded upon next "

code:

(Boot)

".
'

code:

dir

' command output shows that the old firmware remains "

code:

(Active)

" on the system.
Upon attempting to manually set the next boot image ('

code:

set boot system

<

filename

>'), the system issues CLI message "

code:

Error:

<

filename

>

code:

image is not High-Availability Upgrade compatible with active image.

"

Cause
This set of symptoms may be observed when the old and new firmware versions have different HAU Key values so do not support the "hitless upgrade" process, yet the high-availability setting is such that only a HAU-type upgrade is permitted to occur.

The messaging represents a warning that under the current scenario no upgrade can occur.
The underlying issue is independent of whether NetSight Inventory Manager - or some other automated or manual tool - is used to perform the upgrade.

Solution/Workaround
Functions as Designed (FAD).

If it is desired that HAU upgrades occur where supported but standard upgrades occur where HAU is not supported, then change the default "

code:

never

" option to instead specify "

code:

if-possible

" rather than "

code:

always

":
'

set boot high-availability default-mode if-possible

'.

Note: Since the

code:

default-mode

setting only comes into play when the '

code:

set boot system

<

filename

>' command has been issued without the overriding "

code:

high-availability

" or "

code:

standard

" option (true for automated upgrades, and optionally for manual upgrades), an alternate solution which applies to only the current manual upgrade operation is to issue a longer form of the '

code:

set boot system

' command in order to reinforce the goal of a standard upgrade:
'

set boot system

<

filename

>

standard

'
'

code:

Do you want to reset now (y/n) ?

y

'