Nexus C9372PX upgrade from 6.1(2)I3(3a) to 7.0(3)I4(7)

[ahmed.gadi]

We have cisco Nexus  C9372PX  running 6.1(2)I3(3a) and due to cisco bug CSCux61740, we need to upgrade it to 7.0(3)I4(7).

Can someone let me know the upgrade path and if ISSU feature is compatible with this upgrade ?

Thanks & Regards

Ahmed...

[Mark Malone]

You can jump straight through to the latest image no path required , ISSU should be available , but always run thorugh it correctly to see if there is an impact , ISSU fails quite often anyway even when it states it wil work or there is no conflict , my experience something nearly always takes a hit , we dropped all our fexes before even after it said it would run clean , so always have a MW just in case and be prepared even in ISSU for downtime

Best thing from my experience uphgarding nexus is upload the new image into bootflash then run show install all impact nxos bootflash:

This step is included in issu doc below

Release notes

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus9000/sw/7-x/release/notes/70341_nxos_rn.html

How to run issu on 9k  and what steps to follow

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus9000/sw/7-x/upgrade/guide/b_Cisco_Nexus_9000_Series_NX-OS_Software_Upgrade_and_Downgrade_Guide_Release_7x/b_Cisco_Nexus_9000_Series_NX-OS_Software_Upgrade_and_Downgrade_Guide_Release_7x_c...

[ahmed.gadi]

As far as release note of NX-OS is concern, it is mentioned that ISSU support started since 7.0(3)I2(5) onwards, so it seems I need to do upgrade during MW.

Do you have any idea, usually how much time an upgrade takes for Nexus 9K ?

[Mark Malone]

depends on the network design , if no fexes connected up to 10minutes usually just for the switch to reboot and push new image in ,but if fexes connected it can take longer as it upgrades each fex as it goes through it , we did an issu upgrade even after it came back clean during show impact but it hit an issue during it and rebooted every fex as it went through the upgrades took an hour that was on 2 5ks with about 8 - 10 feses connected.

i upgraded 9ks standalone recently was less than 10 minutes they were bare out of the box no config on them brought them up to the same code as the rest of the dc switches

[ahmed.gadi]

Does Nexus 9K upgrade is same as Nexus 5K ? I have not done any Nexus 9K upgrade until now. when I downloaded the NX-OS image for Nexus 9K, it has only one image unlike 5K (system and kickstart).

Actually I have been told to do this upgrade in minimal time interval due to its criticality in the core network, I am not sure if 30 minutes MW will be okay or not ?

I will let you know exactly number of modules it has and if any FEX by tomorrow.

Thanks for your quick response.

[Mark Malone]

Actually I have been told to do this upgrade in minimal time interval due to its criticality in the core network, I am not sure if 30 minutes MW will be okay or not ?

Personally they need to be reasonable you rush it could be worse or the inline upgrade could hit a something and fail and you need to do it twice , these things can happen better to be prepared for it

There basically same when just doing standard upgrade load it up save it  only as you seen only need 1 image loaded .bin file , boot nxos bootflash:/nxos.7.0.3.I5.2.bin

Then if you wnat it to automatically save its config when its up and running as its useful you can use schedular on 9ks instead of eem or dcnm

This will save it to bootflash every 24 hours you can change it to an ftp or something else too but i use Porime for that , its handy to have a local config backup to flash to like IOS using archive

Feature scheduler

scheduler aaa-authentication username mmalone password (Your login password)

scheduler job name NX-OSConfigBackup

copy running-config bootflash:/

copy running-config bootflash:/NX-OS_Latest_Running_Config_Backup

end-job

scheduler schedule name NX-OSConfigBackup

  job name NX-OSConfigBackup

  time start now repeat 0:24:0