Hi everyone,
We recently bought 5 switches, they are all WS-C3850-48P-S
I started to unpack them and make a stack out of them, when I got to the third one it wouldn’t stack which seemed odd.
I noticed that the first two were running OS 16.3.3 and the third one was running OS 03.06.06E, looking at the boxes the first two were marked July 2017 and the third one May 2017. I guess between those dates there was some big change in the OS? In total of the 5 switches 2 are May ones and 3 are July ones.
Looking at these release notes here for 16.3.x:
It states:
"Previously, Cisco IOS XE Denali 16.x.x releases supported this feature only on switches running an IOS XE Denali 16.x.x image joining an existing stack with a different Cisco IOS XE Denali 16.x.x image version. Starting with this release, the active switch can resolve a mismatch across Cisco IOS XE Release 3.xE and Cisco IOS XE Denali 16.3.x releases.”
That suggests to me that the newer switches running 16.3.3 should be able to update these older switches running 03.06.06E?
It states in the notes that this isn’t active by default and you need to add 'software auto-upgrade enable’ to the running config. I’ve done that and also ensured that all the switches are in install mode not bundle mode and finally that the licenses match (ipbase permanent) which seems to be all the pre-requisites. Hardware wise they seem identical and are all version 7 from the look of it.
Try as I might though I can not get the newer switches to upgrade the old ones. If I boot all 3 switches together it pauses the boot sequence saying there are switches in the stack with incompatible OS and only continues to boot when I disconnect the older switch.
If I get the new ones booted up and then connect the older one no auto upgrade takes place, it shows the switch and assigns it a number but says ‘OS-Mismatch’ like this:
H/W Current
Switch# Role Mac Address Priority Version State
------------------------------------------------------------
*1 Active 0008.3237.8100 1 V07 Ready
2 Standby 0008.3237.8d00 1 V07 Ready
3 Member 009a.d2ee.1c00 0 OS-Mismatch
I also tried issuing the 'request platform software package install auto upgrade’ command which didn’t seem to do anything, it pauses for a couple of seconds but there are no messages or anything like that.
The final thing I thought to try was booting the older switch first and then adding in the newer switch. This actually caused the old switch to downgrade the new switch to to the 3.x release which I wasn’t expecting at all! Oops :(
I’m a bit stuck now, am I doing something wrong here or is this procedure not possible? I really need to get them all stacked and on the 16.3.3 release if I can. Other than the notices mentioned above very little seems to get logged about it.
We don't have a cisco support contract so I'm not able to download any software for these, I need to get the switches to just upgrade on the bench. I don't have any experience with this new Linux/iOS type ones but when I've previously done this with 3750 series switches they seemed to upgrade each other with no problems.
Thanks,
Ian
