Migration from Catalyst 6807 to Catalyst 9500

[DAVID]

I will be replacing our pair of Catalyst 6807 chassis running in VSS with a pair of new Catalyst 9500-16x. Currently, I have already replaced our 6800IA instant access switches with Catalyst 9300 switches that are trunked back to the 6807's in the core.

My next phase is to decommission the secondary 6807  chassis since all of the 9300 access switches are mutli-homed to both chassis for redundancy and physically remove the one chassis from the cabinet. My reasoning is to break the physical removal and migration from 6807 to 9500 over two weekends.

Phase 1: Consolidate all access connections to chassis 1 and decommission chassis 2. What are, if any the recommended way to do this short of just ensuring that chassis 1 is the active nose and just shutting  down ports  between chassis 1 and 2?

Phase  2: Power off and disconnect chassis 2 from chassis 1 and remove from cabinet.

Phase 3: Move all existing connections from existing 6800 chassis to Catalyst 9500 already in VSS with applicable configuration already applied from 6807s.

Phase 4: Remove remaining 6807 chassis from cabinet

[balaji.bandi]

Personally, i would do the below :

1 Build StackWise virtual New cat 9500 same configs as Cat 6800 

2. any SVI need to be migrate from Cat 6800 ( create in new Cat 9500 and shutdown)

3. Connect Layer 2 Link between Cat 6800 and Cat 9500 for Migration purposes.

4. At this stage you have VSS (6K) and StackWise Virtual (cat 9500) running and live.

5. Take lease effected stack and Move the Uplink from OLD to new (Either you can do 1 at  a time or  both same time)

   if you choose 1 at a time, shutdown 1 of the uplink from access switch, connect to new Cat 9500, shutdown on old and bring up on new Cat 9500 port(will have small convergence time) - once working, move to second uplink to new Cat 9500

6. You follow the same procedure for all stack of Access switch move to Cat 9500

7. Once all done, now you move SVI and any uplink from core to new cat 9500 

8. shutdown SVI and bring new SVI on Cat 9500

9. same way we move uplink from access, also move uplink core to any

Hope this is the best approach and safe I feel, done many all working as expected (thinking you did all due diligence before migration like VLAN and Config)

[marce1000]

 - My standard reply on such important migrations is : you can receive responses here but can they be considered authoritative ? Meaning my advise is to work with a reseller on this. That way your business gets more protected because there is a solid path forward , and you keep  your job safe when there is a master-failure because you have someone to point at.

 M.