Accepted Solutions
Hi @m1xed0s,
One of my favorite things about ACI is the ease of upgrading. From start to end Cisco has done a very nice job of putting it all together and making it easy..well there are few little quirks. Quite honestly its the first "hitless" upgrade from Cisco that actually works easily and consistently.
Starting when you go on CCO you get the full picture as you can see from the attached.
With the APIC running 4.2(1j) you can see that the companion Switch code is 14.2.1j (little quirk here). Its all 4.2(1j) and its never been clear to me why the "1" is tacked on to the switch (leaf and spine) version ...maybe to make sure its easily distinguishable (although the APIC is an ISO and the switch code is a .bin file).
The ACI upgrade will also take care of any FPGA/EPLD upgrades on the switches which is also very nice.
Having said all of that, I believe the reason you don't find a "minimum" version is because it is not recommended to run the fabric with disparate versions for any length of time. If your APIC is running 4.2(1j) then your switches should be on that version as well. Remember its a system. If you have a well planned fabric with all hosts redundantly connected or in an active standby configuration (and you've tested failover of your services :D), the upgrade of the fabric can be done without any service interruption. If you want to validate 4.2(1j), you can take the APICs and 1/2 the fabric to it, let it run for 12-24 hours and then, if all goes well, finish upgrading the other half of the switches and spines.
Hi @m1xed0s,
One of my favorite things about ACI is the ease of upgrading. From start to end Cisco has done a very nice job of putting it all together and making it easy..well there are few little quirks. Quite honestly its the first "hitless" upgrade from Cisco that actually works easily and consistently.
Starting when you go on CCO you get the full picture as you can see from the attached.
With the APIC running 4.2(1j) you can see that the companion Switch code is 14.2.1j (little quirk here). Its all 4.2(1j) and its never been clear to me why the "1" is tacked on to the switch (leaf and spine) version ...maybe to make sure its easily distinguishable (although the APIC is an ISO and the switch code is a .bin file).
The ACI upgrade will also take care of any FPGA/EPLD upgrades on the switches which is also very nice.
Having said all of that, I believe the reason you don't find a "minimum" version is because it is not recommended to run the fabric with disparate versions for any length of time. If your APIC is running 4.2(1j) then your switches should be on that version as well. Remember its a system. If you have a well planned fabric with all hosts redundantly connected or in an active standby configuration (and you've tested failover of your services :D), the upgrade of the fabric can be done without any service interruption. If you want to validate 4.2(1j), you can take the APICs and 1/2 the fabric to it, let it run for 12-24 hours and then, if all goes well, finish upgrading the other half of the switches and spines.
