Non-XL to XL supervisor upgrade

[Iulian Vaideanu]

I'm planning a RSP720-3C-GE to RSP720-3CXL-GE upgrade for a 7606-S (dual sups), and I'm wondering what would happen if I plug a new XL RSP next to an existing non-XL - would it not power up at all?  would it power up and become the redundant RSP (either Cold or Hot) with non-XL capabilities?

I know this upgrade is supposed to be done with the router powered down, but it would be nice if I could hot-plug one of the new RSPs and it would at least sync its config from the old one before I reload the box...

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

I'm not 100% certain, but I recall a non-XL and XL sup won't work together.  The XL sup might come up "cold", but don't believe you'll be able to copy a config to it.

Copy your config to CF flash on the original sup(s), then when you power up the XL sup, copy the config from the CF flash.

[Furose M]

I have verified the functional specs and this WAS not supported.

The one thats coming up as standby would drop to Rommon.

However, i believe after the fix of CSCec51894, we should be able to use 3C and 3CXL.

well, its definitely not going to harm the device. so, its worth give a try.

btw: if it comes as COLD, you should be able to copy stuffs between each other.

[Iulian Vaideanu]

I performed the replacement this morning.  As you said, trying to pair an XL sup with a non-XL one didn't harm the device, but didn't work either - the newly inserted (XL) sup would just drop to ROMMON without any additional info on the console no matter what I tried (manually "boot bootdisk:c7600rsp...bin" or "confreg 0x2102" then "reset").  Moreover, all this seemed to mess the new SP's config register, so when I powered on the router with just the new sup it dropped to ROMMON and had to be manually booted (and the config-register fixed after that).

Is it possible that you share some details about CSCec51894?  Like platforms affected, affected / fixed ROMMON / IOS versions (all sups involved in my maintenance have 12.2(33r)SRE / 12.2(33)SRE12)...

Thank you.

[Furose M]

hmm, it behaved exactly as mentioned in the functional specs.

well, that bug is an internal bug and doesnt really have more info on it.

This doc also confirms that the SUPs should be exactly identical.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/107258-C6K-PFC-DFC-CFC.html#qa3

while doing more research on the bug, it looks like this is for the system (mainly for linecards). so, i guess we are left with doing the same option of using a different chassis. (like if the system is operating in lower denominator and when you insert a higher one, it will downgrade itself to lower one.