Catalyst 2960-Plus series

[ChristopheD88]

Good day,

I have a confusing situation, I'm trying to set the golden images on the company switches and I'm busy now with the 2960-plus series. The conflict is coming out when I compare the golden image from cisco site which is c2960-lanbasek9-mz.152-7.E5.bin with the latest/suggested from our DNA center which is c2960-lanbasek9-mz.122-55.SE12.bin.

I tend to go for c2960-lanbasek9-mz.122-55.SE12.bin but i'm not sure if it will work and not cause any problems, because i really don't need any - the switches are in production and i don't have any available for testing.

I'll be very grateful for any advice or help!

Thx

[Flavio Miranda]

Which DNAC version do you have?

[ChristopheD88]

1.6.706

[Flavio Miranda]

On the DNAC compatibility Matrix the recommended version is IOS 15.2(5)E.  But keep in mind that you need to have the image on Image repository to make is as Golden. And, this switch is EoL.  Probably, DNAC is not able to download this image any more (not sure, just guessing here).

What you can do is download the image IOS 15.2(5)E manually and then turn it on Golden on DNAC. 

This is a very old switch so I´d prefer to work with the lastest version of IOS. 

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/Website/enterprise/dnac_compatibility_matrix/index.html 

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

12.2(55)SE12 and 15.0(2)SE11 is universally and widely acknowledged as the most stable IOS versions for the 2960-, 3560- and 3750-series of switches.  

[Leo Laohoo]

So you want to let DNAC do the software upgrade?  Let me tell you a story ... 

Once upon a time, back in the 1st week of April 2022, we've decided to revisit how DNAC upgrades the software.  

On Monday, we tried upgrading a single (standalone) 9500 and the upgrade went well. 

On Tuesday, we tried again with another stand-alone 9500.  Again, the result went well. 

Emboldened, we expanded our scope to 14 x standalone 9500.  Here are the results: 

• 10 x standalone 9500 upgraded fine. 
• 2 x standalone 9500 did not even get the BIN file, did not reboot and did not get upgraded. 
• 1 x standalone 9500 had the BIN file extracted but DNAC "freaked out", did not complete the upgrade so the switch did not reboot nor upgraded. 
• 1 x standalone 9500 already had the BIN file extracted two weeks prior.  DNAC "freaked out" and did not reboot. 

All-in-all, a failure rate of 2/7 (or 28.57%). 

Verdict:  Pretty poor performance for a very expensive piece of machinery that could not even do a simple task like upgrading the IOS.  

If you still think DNAC can do a "better" job upgrading IOS/IOS-XE firmware then make sure you have a car ready because when a router or switch boots into ROMMON ...