Question about about using ciscocm.free_common_space_v1.3.k3.cop file

[lisacoody]

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to upgrade CUCM from 10.5.1 to 11.0.1, but only have 21 gig free in the common partition on my publisher. There is nothing installed on the inactive partition because I migrated from MCS servers a year and a half ago.

I know that I can run the free common space cop file to make room for the upgrade. In the release notes for the cop file it says:

"It runs a script that removes the inactive side in the common partition to free up the disk space so that upgrade is successfully completed. You will not be able to switch back to the inactive version after installing this patch. " 

What does this mean for me? I don't have an inactive version. That doesn't make sense so I'm hoping to get some clarification. If I run the cop file and have a problem with 11.0.1 after the upgrade, will I be able to revert to 10.5.1?

Total Free Used
Disk/active    14643056K   1929016K 12565276K (87%)
Disk/inactive 14643120K 13731912K     167376K (2%)
Disk/logging  50989088K 21791232K 26607680K (55%)

Thanks in advance!

Lisa

[Chris Deren]

You do not need to run this COP, it's optional if you feel that you may not have sufficient disk space, which you do not appear to be running into. I would attempt the upgrade as is.

[lisacoody]

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Chris. I appreciate your assistance.

The release notes suggest that I should have 25 gb free in the common partition before attempting the upgrade. I'm pretty close to that, but I've only done two upgrades before and I don't want to make a stupid mistake. 

If the upgrade fails because there's not enough free space, and I have to run the cop file, will it prevent me from reverting back to 10.5.1?

[Deepak Rawat]

Lisa first of all, I think you should attempt to perform the upgrade without applying the cop file as suggested by Chris and see if it works to avoid any possible confusion/issues. The question that you have asked is very valid and below is my understanding about it:

1) Since you do not have anything on the inactive side right now, so what all it will be removing will not be of use anyways. You can though still verify this by running show version inactive

2) Assuming you went ahead with applying the cop file and it will free the common partition then we have below scenario

Current active partition - CM 10.5.1

Current inactive partition after installing the 11.0.1 upgrade file should be 11.0.1 ofcourse

Now you will go ahead with switch version which will/should change the active and inactive partition respectively. Lets say the switch version fails, you will still then remain on 10.5.1 only and 11.0.1 should still remain in Inactive partition. That being said, you should still check with TAC for a final confirmation but I am pretty sure it should be like this only.

Edit to the O.P. - The free space issue will not allow you to upgrade in the first place to 11.0.1 hence Switch Version is something we will really never reach at. Even in this scenario, the active partition should still be 10.5.1 and your CM should keep running because as explained above the active and inactive sides only change post successful Switch Version but still this is something major you are doing there hence it is good to have TAC on your side.

Regards

Deepak

[lisacoody]

Thanks Deepak. 

I verified the inactive partition has nothing on it - Inactive Master Version: 0.0.0.0000-0000. 

I'll double-check with Cisco TAC about applying the cop file and reply back with the answer (perhaps it might help someone else in the future). 

**EDIT** -- Resolution: I contacted Cisco TAC with my question and couldn't get a definitive answer on my question about the .cop file so it is still unanswered. After using RTMT to download and delete trace files I was able to clear enough space to perform the upgrade. Thanks to Jaime, Deepak, and Chris for taking the time to reply and help me out. You guys are awesome!

[Jaime Valencia]

To my knowledge, that applies to the moment in time in which you apply it.

Which in your case, would do absolutely no difference, as right now, on 10.5, you have no version to which revert to.

If you had 10.0, then upgrade to 10.5, and apply the COP, it will clean the (at the time) inactive partition with 10.0

If you did a sh version active/inactive before the COP, you would get the 10.5 and 10.0 info, once you run the COP, for the inactive, you would get the output you're getting, of no version in the inactive partition.

For that scenario I mentioned, you have 10.5 on active, after the COP you have nothing in inactive, and you upgrade to 11, then you would end up with 10.5 on inactive, 11 on active, and you CAN revert back to 10.5.

You can also make more room for the upgrade by just downloading and deleting traces, if you're not comfortable using the COP file. If you do that, I recommend using the not zipped option as it's faster and easier on the server, that's what I usually do in my lab.

[lisacoody]

Thank you very much for your reply, Jaime. Your answers are always so helpful. I just watched your video on using RTMT to collect traces (thank you for recording it!). I'm not sure which files are OK to download and delete so will read more about that topic before acting. I'm also going to check out your other video tutorials.

After reading the replies from you, Deepak, and Chris, if necessary, I feel better about using the free space cop file. 

[Jaime Valencia]

You probably want to download and delete the old traces, just in case you need recent ones for troubleshooting, assuming you have a problem which requires them, as you saw on the video, you can define from/to date, try setting it so you leave a week (or whatever time period you're comfortable with), and see how much space you can free, I once chose all traces for all services/servers for about a week and that was over 5 GB worth of traces for just one CUCM and one IM&P server.

You can do as Chris says and give it a go, you'll get the notification of not enough space before anything is done to the server, if it doesn't complain, assuming there's nothing else that could cause the upgrade to fail, it should be fine.

[oliverpowell]

I'm just going through a similar experience when upgrading from 9.1.2 to 11.5. The customer had been running Detailed traces on Callmanager services  for some time and the common disk space was around 19GB. Needing 25GB for the upgrade I ran the ciscocm.free_common_space_v1.3.k3.cop file (v1.0 first) but it was only freeing up 10s of MB a go, and often none at all.

I then spotted this thread and started to delete log/trace files from RTMT. This was clearing space, but again very slowly, and it appered that if I would repeat the same search in the same date range it still found files to delete. So it clearly was not deleting all the files from disk.

TACs suggestion was to reduce the low and high water marks from the Log Partition through RTMT. Setting low to 20% and high to 25%. After doing this I could see the files being purged and the volume of the common disk space reducing. I need to set back to default levels (90 and 95%) after the upgrade.

I've not got roughly 30GB free for the upgrade tonight......thats another issue :)