Catalyst 5500 Memory Upgrade

[alytle111]

I must upgrade Catalyst 5500 memory from 32Mb to 64Mb DRAM. Currently it has redundant 32Mb DRAM supervisor III (ws-x5530) w/NFFC II (ws-f5531a). Without powering down the switch, I plan to remove the standby supervisor in slot 2, remove old memory, install new memory, and insert the standby supervisor in slot 2. After waiting for the standby supervisor to go “standby”, I’ll fail over to the standby supervisor and repeat the process for the slot 1 supervisor. Is this do-able? How long will the switch be out of service? What happens when both supervisors have different amounts of DRAM? Can you improve on this plan?

[david.bradley]

As for the Sup:

Do you have the option for High Availability in your CatOS? If you have and it enabled the failover will take about 2 seconds.

As for the NFFC:

Are you using layer 3, with HSRP between you NFFCs? If you force the HSRP over using preemt this will take care of your Layer 3

So the way I see it, force L3 across on the the redundant NFFC and if you have High Availabilty anabled you should be able to remove the other Sup with very little impact...

I'm making quite a few assumptions here! :)

Good luck!

[alytle111]

By the way, I do not have RSM or LANE modules so I am strictly layer 2. The info I need is the time it takes the standby supervisor to take over for the primary and if the supervisors can have different DRAM sizes. I found "...The switchover time from active to redundant supervisor engine does not include spanning tree convergence time..." I assume that means at least one spanning tree interval (about 30 seconds in my case) plus some unknown time for the redundant supervisor to take over. I found “…its several seconds faster than older releases…” which still does not provide a number. I need a number for version 5.5(6). In addition, I found “…redundant supervisor engines must be of the same type…” but nothing about the amount of DRAM not being the same. Any help?