Staged VSS deployment upgrade

[brianhill88]

Hello,

We currently have an existing 6506 in data center that we want to add another 6506 to and do a VSS implementation.

I'm trying to minimize down time so our current basic plan was to do the following:

1. Bring up the new 6506 and configure it for VSS

2. Trunk a port between the new 6506 and the production 6506

3. Physicall move connections from the production 6506 to the newly connected VSS switch

4. After all physical ports have been moved, power off the original 6506 swap the supvisor card out for the new 2T Sup card

5. Configure original 6506 for the virtual domain and then connect the VSL's.

My question is:

1.  According to the documentation, to run "switch convert mode virtual"  the standby unit has to be in hot standby.  This means I can't run this prior to moving the connections over, which means once I run "switch convert mode virtual" it will reboot the switches (~ 9 minutes of down time).  Is there anyway around this?

Thanks

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Hi,

In order for the VSS work correctly, you will need to reboot the switches.  Remember, the configuration of both switches become one.  For example if sw1 is primary and sw2 is the backup, port 10 in blade 3 in switch 2 will be 2/3/10.

If you bring up the new switch as primary and the old switch as backup, when the switches reboot the new switch will override you old config, therefore you need to have a good back up of your current config. Also, since port numbering changes you can not just copy and paste the old config to the new switch.  You would have to make modification in Notepad and then paste a section at the time. 

Make sure you have a long enough outage for this, as sometimes it requires more then one reboot and the boot time varies based on the number of modules you have in switches.

HTH

[brianhill88]

Thanks Reza,

I think I will utilize a spare 6506 and setup the VSS stack ahead of time to reduce the down time.  Thanks for the info.

[Reza Sharifi]

I think, that is very good idea.

Thanks for the rating.

Reza