OS Upgrade Version 2 using NSO

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Do you need to upgrade the OS on your infrastructure devices?

If the answer to this question is “yes” then you may have an easy solution through NSO (Network Service Orchestrator). Cisco Advanced Services has developed a pre-packaged NSO-based OS Upgrade service, that can perform Software upgrades on infrastructure devices.

What are the supported Platforms?

Currently Cisco IOS (Cat 3560, Cat 4900), NX-OS (Nexus 5k), IOS-XE, ASA and STAR-OS (ASR5k) have been validated. More platforms (including multivendor OS) will be validated in future releases.

Available Features:

1. Open architecture: Generic upgrade platform to support user-configurable upgrade process for any device family.
2. Batch upgrades:  Can upgrade multiple devices in parallel using individual upgrade threads per device.
3. Multi path upgrade: Ability to upgrade device(s) from any given source version to any given target version e.g from version A->B->C.
4. Staging Images: Can copy relevant images(s) to device(s) before upgrade maintenance window.
5. Regional Image server selection: Ability to select relevant images server(FTP, TFTP, SCP, SFTP etc) based on device region.
6. Configuration Caveats Handling: Can handle configuration issues which may arise during upgrade e.g config loss, pre/post upgrade config modifications etc.
7. Pre-upgrade Validation-rules: User can define a set of validation rules to perform health-checks on the device prior to upgrade.
8. Plan of upgrade: User can define the upgrade process with a sequence of commands to execute with success / failure criteria.
9. Pre / Post Checks: User can define the commands, which can be executed before & after the upgrade to identify any difference in device configs.
10. Lazy Upgrade: Runs the upgrade process on the device only when it is required. It skips the upgrade action if the device is already on target OS.
11. Critical BUG Check: validate if there is a critical bug(s) that is associated with the target image. BUG table is maintained within NSO CDB.
12. Upgrade Report: Generates side-by-side HTML color-coded report highlighting the difference between pre & post health-checks.

For further information please contact the Cisco Advanced Services team, Syed Ziaullah (sziaulla@cisco.com), Solution Architect, Manish Jain (manisjai@cisco.com), Director Software Integration and Orchestration.

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