Upgrading IOS on ME-3600X

[julian.bendix]

Hey Guys,

going to Upgrade the IOS Version on a bunch of Cisco ME-3600X Switches soon.
They haven't been upgraded in a while, so I just wanted to ask for some experience in the field.

Will be going from 15.4(3)S2 to 15.6(2)SP8.

The fact that two images don't fit on the flash simultaneously bothers me a little.

Anything I should watch out for or easy going?  

Thanks for any input and stay safe

Juls 

[balaji.bandi]

instead of keeping old image, you can do archive install to upgrade and delete as per the document ;

https://wannabelab.blogspot.com/2015/04/cisco-me-3600x-ios-upgrade-via-archive.html

http://www.thepedder.co.uk/?p=73

[julian.bendix]

Hey, 

yeah thanks, I was already going througth the guides and stuff.
Qustion was more if you guys ran into special situations in the past or if upgrades of ME switches are usually flawless in your experience.

Thank you very much for your inputs so far!

Best regards
Juls

[Leo Laohoo]

---

@julian.bendix wrote:

The fact that two images don't fit on the flash simultaneously bothers me a little.

---

I do not have any ME3600 but I do have a large fleet of ME3800 and there is no room to fit two IOS, however, it can still be done. 

The most important part is to download the IOS file with a TAR file extension and use the following command to push the firmware to the appliance and automatically delete the old IOS: 

archive download-sw /overwrite tftp://<TFTP_IP_ADDRESS>/IOS_filename.tar

[julian.bendix]

Thanks Leo, yeah I know I was going through the guides and stuff already.

Did you ever run into problems upgrading your ME3800s or was it always smooth?
And do you always go the way using TFTP or did you ever delete the current image from flash, download the new image (via e.g. SCP) and then do the archive download-sw directly from flash?

Due to very narrow time windows I thought about going the way to have the new TAR file on the flash before the upgrade..

Thanks so much for your inputs!

Best regards
Juls

[Leo Laohoo]

---

@julian.bendix wrote:

Did you ever run into problems upgrading your ME3800s or was it always smooth?

---

Upgrading from 15.2 was as dodgy as a three-dollar bill. 

There is a bug where executing the "archive download-sw" and the process would pre-maturely tell the operator that the file extraction has been completely when, in fact, it was still ongoing.  

Otherwise, it is all good and I've never had a switch boot into ROMMON.