Change sup 720

[opnineopnine]

Hi all,

I have 6509 and I will change the 2 sup720, the only difference is that the new sup, will have a different IOS. 

I would like to know if I can replace the standby sup with the new sup720 with out haveing to shutdown the hold box.

Thanks. 

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

You can replace 6500 standby sups with a like sup model without taking the chassis off-line or down, e.g. sup720-3B with sup720-3B.

[opnineopnine]

Joseph.

If this to SUP720 are the same hardware but different IOS, can I do it?

Thanks. 

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Disclaimer

The Author of this posting offers the information contained within this posting without consideration and with the reader's understanding that there's no implied or expressed suitability or fitness for any purpose. Information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as rendering professional advice of any kind. Usage of this posting's information is solely at reader's own risk.

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Posting

Good question - I'm not sure.  Active sup should provide boot var, and so the standby sup might use active's boot var source for IOS image.  If so, you should be okay (until you switch active and standby - before doing so, you would want to have IOS image on standby sources).

If not, if you boot first from external media (disk0 or disk1) you should be able to load that media with the IOS images being used by active sup.

If not, and if you boot first from sup's on-board boot flash, it may be a problem.  Again, not 100% sure.  Hopefully someone else will chime in.

[opnineopnine]

Joseph,

First of all, thanks for your time helping me with this, appreciate.

The other thing I can do is to shutdown the box 6509 and replace both SUP720, but the idea will be not to have any down time.

Thanks

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Disclaimer

The Author of this posting offers the information contained within this posting without consideration and with the reader's understanding that there's no implied or expressed suitability or fitness for any purpose. Information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as rendering professional advice of any kind. Usage of this posting's information is solely at reader's own risk.

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In no event shall Author be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of use, data or profit) arising out of the use or inability to use the posting's information even if Author has been advised of the possibility of such damage.

Posting

This might have some bearing on your question.

I've upgraded 6500 IOS version but loading the new IOS and setting configuration variable to use the new version.

If you switch over to the standby sup, the 6500 takes a while to reload as the new IOS not deals with all the line cards.  The prior active sup will not (I recall) come up in hot mode until you reload the card.

If, instead, you just reload the standby card, (I also recall) it will not become hot because it is running different code.  You need to reload the active card, which will also switch to the standby inactive standby, which starts to run the new code for the chassis.  Again, there's delay as the new code deals with the line cards.

6500 later IOS images support ISSU, but I have tried that.  A fellow engineer has, and so far, he hasn't had luck with using it (like we have on 4500).

Excluding ISSU, moving to different IOS will likely impact your traffic for at least some time, probably in the 5 to 15 minute range.

[opnineopnine]

I think it will be better to download the complete box 6509 and change both of the supervisors. If I do this my question will be if when I start the 6509 will they start in ronmon or not?

Thanks again for your help.

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

If you are simply replacing a failed supervisor with a new one and it is the standby supervisor then you should be able to copy the IOS from the active supervisor to the new standby supervisor.

See this link for details -

https://supportforums.cisco.com/document/86031/installing-correct-ios-replacement-supervisor-rma-restore-sso-redundancy

note that this is for SSO and even though there should be no downtime it is always better to schedule an outage for this just in case something goes wrong eg. seating the new supervisor into the chassis if done incorrectly can cause the chassis to reload.

Jon

[opnineopnine]

I'm replacing both of the supervisors with the new IOS.

Thanks for the link!!

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Disclaimer

The Author of this posting offers the information contained within this posting without consideration and with the reader's understanding that there's no implied or expressed suitability or fitness for any purpose. Information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as rendering professional advice of any kind. Usage of this posting's information is solely at reader's own risk.

Liability Disclaimer

In no event shall Author be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of use, data or profit) arising out of the use or inability to use the posting's information even if Author has been advised of the possibility of such damage.

Posting

That depends on how the replacement sups are configured.  If they have the correct conf reg value and bootable code (e.g. if you pull they from an already working bootable chassis), they should boot up, although it will take longer as the line cards are set to work with the newer IOS for the first time.

If the sups are just out-of-the-box, they will probably start in ROMMON.