05-28-2014 11:46 AM
I'm looking at possibly upgrading from Cisco VSOM/VSM 6.3.2 to 7.5 and had a few questions. I was wondering will Cisco VSM/VSOM 7.5 discover and allow some functionality of a 2500 series camera even if the camera isn't at the recommended minimum software? Also, does VSM/VSOM 7.5 at release contain the latest firmware for cameras its supports? Lastly, does anyone know of a company that provides SMARTNET for Cisco gear even after the "End of New Service Attachment Date: HW" has been passed?
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06-03-2014 07:33 AM
I'm unsure how they view SMARTnet in the various stages of renewal. Personally, I've never had any issues getting support, even when we were going through the renewal of our mixed batch of expired/existing contracts.
You are correct on the firmware for your cameras. These need to be updated to at least the lowest supported firmware, with the latest firmware preferred. We had odd issues with our cameras when they were below the lowest supported firmware. New firmware fixed that. You may have issues updating some of your cameras with really old firmware if you have changed their camera name, but this can be resolved by setting the name back to its default value. Once you get to 7.5, there's a nice firmware update utility for the cameras.
05-29-2014 12:10 PM
Unfortunately, there is no upgrade path from VSM 6.X to VSM 7.X. It is a migration, and needs to be performed in coordination with Cisco support.
With respect to SmartNet, I believe only they vendor can provide that, so the answer would be no.
06-02-2014 12:11 PM
Depending on your requirements for the migration, you may be able to do the migration yourself.
When we migrated from 6.3.2 to 7.x, we were going from the MSP to the VMware. We simply left our old system intact and migrated the cameras to the new system. We wrote a SQL query to get the data about our cameras out of the MySQL database and import it again using an Excel spreadsheet. Since the old system was intact, we still had our old archives and left the MSP system there until our archives expired over the course of the month. During the migration, since we had our old system intact, we could easily revert back to the old system if issues occurred, but since we tested thoroughly, everything went smoothly. You'll need to work with your Cisco rep to get the appropriate licensing since there are some changes between 6.x and 7.x.
So how difficult this is will depend on what you are migrating to and your expectations for what needs to happen with the existing data.
FYI, we have 7.5 installed in a test environment and haven't experienced any major issues with it so far. However, since this is a .0 release, we are waiting until 7.5.1 becomes available before putting this in production. VSM 7.5 brings a lot of new features to the table, so we want to give it time to mature a little before introducing this into our production environment. So for now, we are running 7.2.1 (although we should probably upgrade to 7.2.2).
06-02-2014 01:15 PM
Thanks for the insight on the migration. I'm finding out we might not be able to go to 7.x unless we get a camera overhaul or get the latest firmware for our 2500s, 2600s, 2621Vs, and 2611s. Do you know if Cisco considers a SMARTnet renewal "renewal" while the service contract is still active or "renewal" on an existing but expired service contract?
06-03-2014 07:33 AM
I'm unsure how they view SMARTnet in the various stages of renewal. Personally, I've never had any issues getting support, even when we were going through the renewal of our mixed batch of expired/existing contracts.
You are correct on the firmware for your cameras. These need to be updated to at least the lowest supported firmware, with the latest firmware preferred. We had odd issues with our cameras when they were below the lowest supported firmware. New firmware fixed that. You may have issues updating some of your cameras with really old firmware if you have changed their camera name, but this can be resolved by setting the name back to its default value. Once you get to 7.5, there's a nice firmware update utility for the cameras.
06-14-2014 12:28 PM
Hi mate,
You can use the info from the below mentioned link:
https://supportforums.cisco.com/document/12163416/vsm-upgrade-632-70-and-beyond
Regards,
Anim Saxena
Community Manager Security
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