ACI Upgrade

[janica]

Hi Team,

I have a question regarding ACI data center upgrade.

Unfortunately, I have only short maintenance windows, and I am worried that I will not have enough time to upgrade everything at once.

We have 3 APICs and a multi-pod fabric with 2 spines and 6 leaves in each pod.

Is it possible to upgrade only APICs first, and then in the next maintenance window (for example next day) upgrade the pods?

Last time I upgraded APICs, it took around three hours.

Thank you for your help.

[Daniel Slyk · Accepted solution]

Hi Janica,

I had a similar situation, I upgraded the APICs in the evening and then started
upgrading the first pod the next morning.

From a technical perspective, this is possible. It’s not the recommended approach. 

As long as you’re not making any configuration changes in between, it should be fine.

It also helps if you’re staying within the same train release and not doing a major release jump.

In release 6.2(1f), there is a new feature that allows running the fabric on mixed versions
(with certain conditions applied).

Most likely not your scenario, but good to know :).

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/6x/release-notes/cisco-apic-release-notes-621.html#Newsoftwarefeatures 

[janica]

Thank you