[c-nsp] NCS-5001 - MPLS L3VPN Issue

[James Bensley]

On 26 February 2016 at 23:13, Tom Hill <tom at ninjabadger.net> wrote:
> On 26/02/16 22:54, James Bensley wrote:
>> We are not upgrading between versions only appying SMUs and service
>> packs to the current version. In the case of moving from 4.3.4 to
>> 5.1.3 and now moving to 5.3.3 (since that is the new extended
>> maintenance release); the process is erase the box, and install from
>> fresh, then upload the full config.
>
> That sounds horrifically laborious.
>
> I upgraded a 9001 from 4.3.2 to 5.3.1 in one hit. No need to TurboBoot,
> no mass reconfiguration.
>
> Any configuration changes were extremely minimal. The guides (PDFs) at
> http://www.cisco.com/web/Cisco_IOS_XR_Software/index.html were very
> quite thorough, I must say.
>
> I've done it since then too, with an RSP-440. It was only 5.1.3 to 5.3.2
> that time, but it was just as painless.

Each to their own, but my take is to automate it if it's not big deal,
if it's a "very important box" you can automate parts of it and
present for the main "parts" of the process.

I don't want to have some PEs that were 4.3.4 and where upgraded to
5.3.3, others that were 5.1.3 that where upgraded to 5.3.3. I also
don't want 4.3.4 SP10 boxes being upgraded to 5.1.3 then patched to
SP8 etc, then upgraded to 5.3.3 etc. That's all messy.

Erase the box, push up the new image and original config. That way the
network state is known at all times without having to ask the PEs.
Everything is nice and consistent.

James.