Nexus 5K & FEX upgrade without disruption

[S891]

Hi ,

I am planning to upgrade N5Ks pair and four N2Ks from 5.2.N.1 to 7.x.x.x. The objective is to perform this upgrade without disruption as all servers are dual homed and L3 is not configured on Nexus. 

There are 2 x N5Ks and 4 x N2Ks and each N2K has dual connection to N5Ks. I have attached diagram to explain the setup. I am planning to do the following steps:

1. Shutdown all links on N5K-2 (upstream and downstream)

2. Verify servers connectivity via N5K-1

3. Upgrade N5K-2 to new code

4. On N5K-2 bring up link to L3 switch

5. On N5K-2 bring up VPC link to N2K-1

6. Upgrade N2K-1

7. Repeat step 5,6 for each N2K

8. Upgrade N5K-1

9. Bring up VPC peer link between two N5Ks

Please suggest if this is a workable plan. 

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

Have a look at this link.  Since you are running ver 5.x the upgrade maybe disruptive.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5500/sw/upgrade/702_N1_1/n5500_upgrade_downgrade_700.html#pgfId-641712

The documentation is not very clear, but take a look at this section as well.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5500/sw/upgrade/702_N1_1/n5500_upgrade_downgrade_700.html#pgfId-640981

HTH

[TIM JUDGE]

If you are using the keep-alive connection between the two, you will run into a problem when you upgrade the primary switch. The secondary switch will see the keep-alive link is up to primary and it will shut down its ports so all ports will be down on both switches while the primary is restarting