Upgrading WLC with HA from 7.4 to 8.x

[Vincent Clark]

Has anyone upgraded 5508 WLC's to 8.x code from 7.4 that are already setup for HA. I'm assuming I will need to break the HA setup to upgrade each box and reestablish it when I'm done. We will have close to 250 of these HA pairs to upgrade in the coming months and trying to develop the migration plan. 

[Sandeep Choudhary]

Hi,

1.Start initiate to the upgrade on the Active WLC in the HA setup and wait for the upgrade to finish.
2. The Active WLC executes all the upgrade scripts and transfers the entire image to the Standby WLC using the Redundant Port

To know more, Check these link:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/document/117821/how-upgrade-wlc-ha-setup

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/7-5/High_Availability_DG.html#pgfId-46645

Regards

Dont forget to rate helpful posts

[Vincent Clark]

Headed to the lab right now to give it a try. Thanks for the quick response. I figured as much but I just hadn't tried it because the lab controllers weren't configured with the code I needed. 

Regards,

[Vincent Clark]

Thanks everyone for the help. I got side tracked with other stuff and travel but we got some of the WLC's upgraded and we will keep plugging away.

Regards,

[gohussai · Accepted solution]

In short You First upgrade the Primary and its replicated to Standby WLC via Redundant port.So i dont think you need to break HA in up-gradation.

Upgrade Procedure

1. Use CLI/GUI to initiate the upgrade on the Active WLC in the HA setup and wait for the upgrade to finish.
2. The Active WLC executes all the upgrade scripts and transfers the entire image to the Standby WLC using the Redundant Port
3. Upon receiving the entire image from the Active WLC, the Standby WLC starts executing the upgrade scripts.

Note: The transfer of image to the Standby WLC and upgrades happening in the Standby WLC can be seen on the Active WLC via

Console/Telnet/SSH/Http connection.

4. Once the Standby WLC completes the upgrade successfully, you can see a Successful message (which is observed on the Active WLC), issue the show boot command on the Active WLC to make sure that the new image is set as the primary image.

5. To transfer the new image to all the AP's in the network, initiate Primary image pre-download from the Active WLC.

6.In order to verify that the primary image on WLC is set as the backup image on AP's use the command show ap image all

7. The WLC's and AP's primary image is set to the new image by Initiating swap option. This option interchange the backup image as primary on the AP's.

8. Use the command schedule-reset (as per planned outage) along with the no swap option, to reset the AP's and WLC's so that they can boot with the new image.

9. The Standby WLC will reset just one minute before the scheduled resettime to boot and come up first to take over the network with the new image.

10. All the AP's will reboot and join the new Active WLC and the previous Active WLC will change its role to Standby

Note: To verify that both the WLC's and AP's have booted with the new image use the commands show boot,show sysinfo,show ap image all and show redundancy summary

Also Check the following link.

http://networkguy.de/?p=558

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12206711/wlc-5508-ios-upgrade-ha-mode

Hope this help ;)

[mohanak · Accepted solution]

Upgrade Procedure in HA Setup

Complete these steps:

1. After the WLCs are configured in the HA setup, the Standby WLC cannot be upgraded directly from the TFTP/FTP server.

2. Initiate upgrade on the Active WLC in the HA setup via CLI/GUI, and wait for the upgrade to finish.

3. Once the Active WLC executes all the upgrade scripts, it will transfer the entire image to the Standby WLC via the Redundant Port.

4. When the Standby WLC receives the image from the Active WLC, it will start executing the upgrade scripts. The transfer of the image to standby and the execution of the upgrade scripts on the Standby WLC can be seen on the Active WLC Console/Telnet/SSH/Http connection.

5. After a successful message of Standby Upgrade is observed on the Active WLC, it is important to issue the show boot command on the Active WLC in order to make sure the new image is set as the primary image.

6. Once verified, initiate primary image pre-download on the Active WLC in order to transfer the new image to all the APs in the network.

7. After pre-image is completed on all the APs, issue the show AP image all command in order to verify that the primary image on the WLC is set as the backup image on APs.

8. Initiate swap option to interchange the backup image as primary on the APs. With this implementation, the WLC's and AP's primary image is set to the new image.

9. Issue the schedule-reset command as per planned outage with the no swap option in order to reset the APs and WLCs so that they can boot with the new image.

10. The Standby WLC will reset just one minute before the scheduled reset time to boot and come up first to take over the network with the new image.

11. All the APs will reboot and join the new Active WLC, and the previous Active WLC will transition to the standby role.

12. Issue the show boot, show sysinfo, show ap image all, and show redundancy summary commands in order to verify that both the WLCs and APs have booted with the new image.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/7-5/High_Availability_DG.html#pgfId-43571