Should the firmware upgrades be done on both partitions or just one; what is best practice?

[Pierre_Demassey]

I'm upgrading our Summit X460G2-48p-10G4's form v.16 to v.21. What is the best practice or convention when upgrading? Should both partitions be done or should one be left to revert back to in case a roll back is needed?

[Pierre_Demassey]

Thanks for all of the info. I'll expand a bit on the scenario. I'm updating and doing basic configurations on our order of about 25 Summit X460-G2's to get ready for our upgrade. So all of these switches are fresh out of the box. We may be stacking these but not using the standard stacking modules. We may stack using the SFP+ fiber VIM's. We don't currently have any other Summit or EXOS gear currently in use on our network. Should this change my approach any as in should I upgrade both partitions?

[Erik_Auerswald]

Especially if the switch comes with a firmware version that is not supported for production, you should make sure that no partition retains that version (by upgrading both partitions to the same version).

The CLI prompt shows something like "software upgrade required" if the firmware the switch is shipping with is not suitable for production use.

[Ram3]

Yes, you can upgrade both the partitions to either EXOS 16.2.2.4 / EXOS 21.1.3.7. Sometimes new switches might be running older EXOS versions. Make sure to have same firmware/same partitions across the switches to build a stack. To avoid known issues, we can upgrade these switches.

[cbuchenau]

For completeness, there are some situations where we ensure that both partitions hold the same version: - New roll-out of a switching infrastructure with a new, clean configuration - Adding a new switch into an existing infrastructure - we know the firmware works. Especially when sending the switch to a remote environment where a 3rd party technician might have to touch the system as well. With previous firmware versions we also liked to have the same partition being active on all switches, so that the upgrade command specifying the primary or secondary partition would work on all devices. This is not the case anymore since Extreme introduced the parameters of active/passive partition. One more note... as you are planning a major release upgrade, I recommend to test the upgrade on a spare switch first. Then take your time to check the new configuration file. Then, once you are happy, see if you can isolate one part of your network to upgrade first, and make sure you are happy with the results. Then do the rest.