I need some guidance to upgrade a Cisco 6880 VSS pair. Each Cisco 6880 is equipped with dual supervisors. I am looking to upgrade between major versions 15.1 to 15.4 so this doesn't need to be an ISSU upgrade. Can anyone confirm the correct procedure for this? Is it just a matter of uploading the IOS files to bootflash and slavebootflash, changing the boot variables and reloading or is it more involved?
if your going to do a non issu upgrade you could do the FSU which is what your talking about but works with redundant sups in VSS setup , the ISSU is a bit flakey in my opinion and works when it wants
docs below should contain everything what you need
Is it just a matter of uploading the IOS files to bootflash and slavebootflash, changing the boot variables and reloading or is it more involved?
Correct.
Copy the IOS files to all supervisor cards, change the boot variable string to point to the new IOS, make sure the config-registry is 0x2102, save the config and reboot.
Yes you can reboot both if your not concerned about any downtime so what your doing is hard reset Then you have the FSU which takes a hit one at a time Then the ISSU which isnt supposed to take a hit
if your going to do a non issu upgrade you could do the FSU which is what your talking about but works with redundant sups in VSS setup , the ISSU is a bit flakey in my opinion and works when it wants
docs below should contain everything what you need
Is it just a matter of uploading the IOS files to bootflash and slavebootflash, changing the boot variables and reloading or is it more involved?
Correct.
Copy the IOS files to all supervisor cards, change the boot variable string to point to the new IOS, make sure the config-registry is 0x2102, save the config and reboot.
Thanks Leo but one last thing I would like to clarify. When you say reboot, I assume that you mean reboot both chassis at the same time? I have seen a number of Cisco docs suggesting that you need to reboot the standby first using command 'redundancy reload peer' and then once the standby is backup use command 'redundancy force-switchover' to switchover to the upgraded standby and then reboot/upgrade the active. I believe that this procedure is referred to as FSU although I'm assuming that this isnt necessary and we can just reboot both chassis simultaneously as you suggested if we dont care about the time the upgrade takes?
Yes you can reboot both if your not concerned about any downtime so what your doing is hard reset Then you have the FSU which takes a hit one at a time Then the ISSU which isnt supposed to take a hit
