Upgrading VCS Expressway Cluster from X7.2.3

[Paul Richardson]

Hello,

I have a VCSE cluster running on VMs that is currently on X7.2.3 and needs to be upgraded.  The plan is to upgrade to X12 in the least possible stages.  According to Cisco clustering docs, it s OK to upgrade from X8.6 or above to X12.  My idea was to upgrade from X7.2.3 to X8.6.1 and then to X12.  Looking in the clustering guide for X8.6 it only details upgrading from X8.n to X8.6 with no mention of upgrades from X7.

The cluster guide for X8.1 does state that you can upgrade a X7 cluster with no issue to X8.1

The question is can anyone confirm if I can upgrade directly from X7.2.3 to X8.6.1 or should I do an intermediate upgrade to X8.1?

This would give a staged upgrade 7.2.3 -> 8.1 -> 8.6.1 -> 12.x

Any advice gratefully received.

Cheers, Paul R.

[Mike_Brezicky]

If you are in a full cluster, I would suggest you to the complete staged upgrade approach. Direct to 8.6 would probably work fine, but I would prefer to play it safe.

Fortunately, these upgrades do not take very much time so an extra step should only cost an hours time.

[Wayne DeNardi]

The staged upgrade you have suggested should work fine.

You will need to check your VMware ESXi version too to make sure that it's supported as many of the older versions of VMware ESXi have had support removed in the newer software.