RSP-440 Typhoon Recommended Version

[philclemens1835]

We have a group of 9006's and 9010's with RSP-440's and Typhoon LC's running 5.1.3.  I was planning to upgrade this group to 6.4.2, based on Aleksandar's discussion:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/service-providers-documents/ios-xr-release-strategy-and-deployment-recommendation/ta-p/3165422

But, given the time involved with jumping through 6.1.4 in the lab, I am considering stopping there, and then installing sp9.  While this doesn't get us to the latest recommended release, it does get us into 6.x.x.

Has anybody else made this jump from 5.1.x to 6.4.2?  If so, how did it go, and do you have any recommendations?

Is 6.1.4 a recommended place to land, or should it only be seen as a waypoint in the upgrade to 6.4.2?

Thanks,

Phil.

[smilstea]

5.3.4 is the last release for Trident and is one place you could park your devices, however there are no more SMUs on 5.3.4. 6.1.4 still gets SMUs for a bit longer, September (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/ios-nx-os-software/ios-xr-software/eos-eol-notice-c51-740473.html).

The issue with going to 6.4.2 is actually due to the SWIMS package signing (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ios-nx-os-software/ios-xr-software/213745-ios-xr-upgrade-changes-certificate-expi.html)

What you can do is if you choose 6.1.4 (which is a better choice than 5.3.4 in my opinion), you can install the software and service pack at the same time, meaning only 1 reload is needed. Otherwise you might as well upgrade to 5.3.4 then to 6.4.2 + SP in 2 reloads.

Sam

[philclemens1835]

Thanks Sam.

I'm still working through my process in the lab, but it is looking like one reload is going to be the best bet, which puts us at 6.1.4.  But, based on the EOS page, even that isn't buying us much in terms of time.

The other option my coworker mentioned is to upgrade and pre-configure two RSP's in our lab, and then simply swap them into production chassis's(sp?) during maintenance windows.  That would allow us to get to 6.4.2 with effectively a single reload per production chassis.  And, we would then have the removed RSP's still on 5.1.3 as a back-out plan, should we have issues.

Thanks,

Phil.