Question regarding first fabric discovering

[compterds]

Hello Everyone,

We just received our ACI infrastructure.

I decided to check firmware version before the first fabric initialization (discovery) and I was a little bit suprised by the dissimilarity.

As an example :

1 spine running 11.2.3m

1 leaf running 12.2.1n

1 other leaf running 12.0.2f

... and so on.

In the documentation that I've found, it said that every equipment from the fabric should have the same version (APIC 2.2.1m and leaf/spine 12.2.1m as an example)

What should I do ? 

- Trying to upgrade my leaf/spine to the same version before running the fabric discovery

- Running fabric discovery and upgrade everything by the GUI (Is it possible despite the different version on equipment ? )

Thanks 

Yoann

[aleccham · Accepted solution]

Hello Yoann,

As you have already read it is best practice to have all device operating on the same code. Which means we need to either upgrade your fabric (leaves/spines) to whatever code version is running on the APIC, or upgrade your APIC's to the desired and then upgrade the switch nodes. Then we can policy upgrade the fabric to whatever final code version you've decided to run. 

If all nodes have been discovered and in a fabric then you can simply upload the appropriate switch firmware to the APIC's and policy upgrade from there.

Regards,

[Nik Noltenius]

Hi Yoann,

using the GUI to upgrade the devices is far more convenient than upgrading them up front via CLI. Therefore I'd go with discovering the devices first and upgrading them afterwards.

Make sure that the APIC(s) run the target version first though.

Also as a side node: When upgrading the controllers should go first, when downgrading the switches should go first. This is to make sure that the controller always has a higher or the same software version as the switches and you don't use features in the fabric the APIC doesn't understand. But for intial setup this shouldn't matter anyway.

Kind regards,

Nik