Download universal IOS for Switch

[tangbuiquoc]

Hi all,

I`ve struggled to download Universal firmware for Cisco L3 switches. We have nearly 100 cisco switches in our coporation, one of them are layer 3 with permenant licensing 

Now, we are expecting to download universal firmware to upgrade devices to latest release but i was unable to download with my normal Cisco account

Contacted Cisco to give a hand on this download, but i`m asked many times to update on our branch addresses,and provided CCO but could not help out

Our vendor suggested to buy Cisco Smartnet, but this services is used for a specific switch model/serial that i don`t expect since we have multiple switches model not only single model... this mean we have to purchase multiple Cisco smartnet ??

Any view on download firmware  ?  Normally what do you do with your Cisco devices when IOS become old as an Administrator ?

Appreciated your help

[Mark Malone]

Hi

You need to have support with a reseller to be able to continuously download and use Cisco software on your hardware , you need a contract for all your devices each serial is mapped to a support contract its expensive but that's the way its done and if switch breaks or hits a bug it gets replaced through your reseller with Cisco

Without some form of support you wont be able to get the latest releases and fixes for your devices

[tangbuiquoc]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the information...

we contacted reseller but they were unable to download our expected released

One single device with Cisco Smartnet SNT 8x5xNBD costs us about 400£/year.

I support if we register with almost 100 devices per year then it will be expensive...our purpose is just downloading IOS not technical support

Normally, do you often upgrade IOS switch or just leave it working on current IOS ?

Cheers

[Mark Malone]

We scan all our ios versions nx-os etc and if we find any vulnerabilities that will effect us we upgrade , we use MVM and Prime to do this and other software apps too

We upgrade maybe every year at least once depending what we find , the problem with not having support can be huge , we just hit a major issue after buying over 70 routers where an Intel chip will shutdown after 18 months, this was released the other week by Cisco , now if we didn't have support in place we would be left with a lot of expensive pieces of kit which would be rendered useless after 18 months but as we have support Cisco will give us a replacement for them , so running a network full of high tech device without support can be a risk

we have over a 1000 network devices so yes it is very expensive

As well you leave yourself open to bugs , the longer you run the version the more likely you could hit something , eventually cisco make each ios version retired  as they move forward too

[tangbuiquoc]

Thanks for your sharing knowlege.

Maybe we will goes through reseller channel to provide expected IOS, that way will be easier 

The scanning and patching software sounds great that i will go with this route

Cheers