Phone Firmware upgrade Startegy for 9.1 --> 10.5 migration

[Asif Khan]

Hello,

We are planning our migration from CUCM 9.1 to 10.5.

I want to do a phone firmware upgrade before upgrading the cluster, to minimize phone upgrades. Planning to use PFD (Peer File) for this.

My question is, what would be the best strategy to upgrade the firmware?

I am not sure if the current load in 9.1 will be supported by 10.5, and if 10.5 device pack/load is installed on 9.1, would 9.1 support it.

So should I upload the 10.5 pack on 9.1 and upgrade the phones in groups, or would 10.5 support it.

The other thing is, I just want to confirm, after a cluster reboot/version switch (in upgrade), would the phones restart and try to upgrade or would only try to connect to available CUCM.

The compatibility Matrix is a bit confusing.

Thanks,

AK.

[George Thomas]

The best strategy would be to add the firmware version that is in 10.5 to your 9.1 cluster and upgrade the phones in batches (or at once as desired). 

When the CUCM that a phone is registered restarts, the phone will connect to the backup CUCM in the CallManager group that is assigned in the device pool.

You can install the version that is available in version 10.5 on your 9.1 server. Make sure you read the release notes of the firmware you are going to. 

Also make sure you watch out for this bug: https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCun26289

[Jaime Valencia]

Just to add to George's advice, DevPacks are version specific, so no way you can install a 10.5 DevPack on a 9.x, all you need are the COP files for the FW, the RNs and/or README contain the versions they will work with (plenty of them mention that before you download them), make sure to read them.

If you want to use peer FW sharing, make sure to reset them all at once, and notice that one master phone will be selected PER phone model (that supports the feature) PER subnet.

[Asif Khan]

Thanks for the reply guys.

I DID try to upload the 10.5 pack in CUCM 9.1, but it rejected it. so no way it will do that.For the file this is what I understand:

1- COP files: contain script to upgrade the firmware

2- loads files: contains the actual firmware

So would a good strategy be:

-Register all phones on Sub first. Keep Sub as Primary.

-Upgrade Publisher.

-Register a group of phones on Upgraded publisher (by making changes on PUB), by making Pub primary for them.

-the Phone group Upgrades the firmware

-Group of Phone gets upgraded. move to next group.

-After all Phones are upgraded, upgrade the sub.

If there is a better way to do it, please let me know. The biggest challenge we have is to get all 3000 phones migrated in 1 night.

Thanks guys. Appreciate it!

[Asif Khan]

The Other thing is, I think I am confusing my self between Device packs and Firmware.

[Manish Gogna]

Hi Asif,

Firmware is phone model specific, whereas Device package upgrades the default firmware  of all phone models on the cluster and it is required to be installed on all servers followed by cluster reboot.

HTH

Manish