Advice needed for migration from one MPLS vendor to another.

[mcampbell]

I have been handed a project and limited resources (yeah I’m sure you know the position).

Objective:

Migrate the site remotely without local intervention. (no technical staff on the ground)

Quick easy rollback if new circuit turn-up runs into issues.

In excess of 300 sites to convert.

Technical Information:

MPLS circuits.

Original ISP running RIP.

New ISP running BGP.

Sites can be anything from a single T1, MLPPP, to DS3.

IOS: adventerprisek9-mz.124-24.T4 or newer.

Routers: 2801, 2811, 2821, 2851, 2921

No out of band access to router.

No budget for adding second WIC or alternate router for turn-up.

I am asking, for any insight on how best to proceed with the migration with the limitations I mention above.

Originally the powers that be, thought we would just send out a flash card to the site, have an employee on site, power off the router, swap the flash, and then just boot up to the new config. And if there were issues on the turn-up of the new circuit, turn off the router swap back the flash and boot to old config. I am not saying this cant be done, but I honestly do not know how to implement it as they imagined, with practically 0 intervention onsite.

On another optional front, I am being told that there is some "script" that can be ran that will initiate a new config, and after a certain amount of time roll back to previous config. Of course the person telling me there is this "script" doesn’t know what it is, and has only heard about it.

Your time and insight are appreciated.

[milan.kulik]

Hi,

you might mean "reload in ..." commad?

That's what I usually do when implementing a config change which might cause me to lose a connection to the router:

I issue "reload in 20" CLI command

and then I start configuration changes.

In a case of any trouble (including losing my connection to the router), the router reloads in 20 minutes with the (old) startup configuration.

In a case everything goes smoothly, I issue "reload cancel" command and save the new config.

You can even prepare a text file with all the commands necessary to change your config to a new one (especially if you are changing IP addresses) and save it to the router flash as a first step.

Then issue "reload in ..." and "copy Flash:text.file run" which will add the commands from the text.file to the running config.

And finally "reload cancel", of course :-)

HTH,

Milan

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello,

in addition to what Milan suggested if the new circuit is physically different you need one person on site to move cables from the old circuit to the new one after you have implemented the change of IP address

you can also use reload at to specify a date and time for the reload

in case of problem restarting the router with the saved config is not enough to recover you need someone to swap cables to use the old circuit if they are different.

>>

2801, 2811, 2821, 2851, 2921

given the router models you could consider the use of few UMTS WICs to be sent to sites to be migrated

these WICs could be reused on other sites, but it requires someone to mount and remove them later.

you should test the configuration on a router that you have in your offices and then this could be part of the configuration file mentioned by Milan.

Hope to help

Giuseppe