Rookie Upgrade Question

[jonathan.salter]

It's been a while since I did an upgrade...trying to confirm I can do the upgrade on the Inactive partition without loosing service.

I will then switch versions during a maintenance window.

[Kita]

This depends on if it is a standard upgrade or a refresh upgrade.

What version are you upgrading from/to?

For example 9.x to 11.5.x is RU ---- can't install to inactive partition

10.5.1 to 11.5/12 is SU/LU ( I forget the terms) but can be installed to inactive partition and switch version in a maintenance window.

If you are unsure if it is RU, search for CUCM <version> upgrade guide and you'll find the upgrade type based on your current version!

[jonathan.salter]

11.5 - 12.x

[Kita]

11.x

12.0(1)

PCD Migration PCD Upgrade (Direct Standard Upgrade) Cisco Unified OS Admin (Direct Standard Upgrade)

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/upgrade/12_0_1/cucm_b_upgrade-and-migration-guide-1201/cucm_b_upgrade-and-migration-guide-120_chapter_0101.html

[Kita]

Not sure if my table is going to show up, but 11 to 12 is a Direct Standard Upgrade.  So you are good to install to the inactive partition.  Remember you will need 25GB (at least) free on the common partition.

[Nadav]

Upgrade without disruption? But you need to change the host OS from RHEL to CentOS, and this needs to be done before the upgrade. That means you need to shutdown the CUCM, change the OS to CentOS and only then upgrade to 12.x

[Kita]

You can absolutely upgrade to the inactive partition...I just upgraded 10.5 to 12.0 in this manner.  You will want to shut down and adjust virtual resources before the switch version, but you can stage the upgrade without interuption.

[Nadav]

Yes you do upgrade to the inactive partition, but the upgrade process in itself requires downtimes before and after upgrading to that partition.

I look at changing the OS to CentOS as part of the upgrade to 12.0 so that having to shutdown is a loss of service. If the question was whether there is a loss of service or redundancy to upgrade to 12.0, then the answer is that you do need to shutdown your virtual machines and make adjustments before the upgrade, albeit for short periods. 

There is a detailed Cisco Live presentation (BRKUCC-2011) which explains how to upgrade to 12.0/12.5 that can be used for reference at the entire procedure from any CUCM cluster and expected downtimes throughout.

[Kita]

Im thinking the original question was about only staging on the inactive partition and doing the rest during the maintenance window.  

[Nadav]

Maybe, but I figured the fear was when to schedule maintenance windows for the entire upgrade from start to finish.
If there was no need to change VM configurations before hand then the upgrade could be done simultaenously on all servers without switching, and without having to schedule any loss of service.