[c-nsp] Cisco Cat4500 Quad Sup VSS ISSU IOS Upgrade

[Eli Kagan]

Thanks! I would really appreciate it! I am running 3.8.8e right now. Most likely going to 3.8.10e or 3.11.3ae


-- ek 
 
  On Sat., 13 Mar. 2021 at 7:52 p.m., Garrett Skjelstad<garrett at skjelstad.org> wrote:   I'm not sure. Can you tell me the version you're currently working with and trying to move to? I'll try and carve out some time next week and try it for you, if you'd like.
I'm not sure if ISSU unlocks some compatibility for differing versions to work with VSS, or if it will take a version match with ISSU compatible versions without grumpy catting.
Obviously it won't tell you if services continue to work gracefully, but I can least tell you if it pairs and returns to # successfully.
-Garrett
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 7:16 PM Eli Kagan <e.kagan at yahoo.com> wrote:

Thanks Garrett!

Unfortunately I cannot afford a 30 minutes outage.

What doesn't make sense to me is the "issu loadversion" step. If I understand correctly, it would load the current hot standby with the new version. But wouldn't a cold standby take over if I reloaded the hot standby CPU, effectively bringing me back to the same state?

Is there a reason why I shouldn't do the upgrade the old fashion way? That is, change the boot variable, reload hot standby manually, failover and then reload the other three supervisor engines. 
I mean, is there a benefit to using "issu loadverion/runversion/acceptversion/commitversion" process vs just loading the software and reloading manually?

Thanks,
Eli 






On Friday, March 12, 2021, 04:08:25 PM EST, Garrett Skjelstad <garrett at skjelstad.org> wrote: 





I know this is an awful answer, but just don't do ISSU on them. 😅

Most of my experiences come from quad Sup8s in the same chassis. We have been running 3.11.1 for the past 49 weeks, since our last cycle, which is 12/18 months.

The biggest ISSUe (lol) with it, is just the sheer number of jumps back and forth as you climb the ISSU ladder from a historic release. We have also found it to be beneficial to do a pre-ISSU supervisor restarts for each supervisor prior to actually doing the upgrade so as to lessen the chance of getting 'stuck' in a ISSU-loop with a hung Supervisor. The fact that 4500 sups sit in a 'cold' mode when doing the jumps just adds to the delay, 6500s/6800s are MUCH nicer for this action in the fact they are 'warm(hot?)' and already booted.

A full cold restart of the shelves takes approximately 23 minutes per our lab units. We have found in some locations that have tolerable maintenance windows, to load/prep and simply cold start the shelves, instead of a weeklong of ISSU maintenance windows. Of course, if you patch every 60-120 days as the cadence of each release, perhaps it's more manageable. I read there are some additional protections and time optimizations in later rommon versions, but for our use, we just haven't seen the need for a seperate out of cycle ROMMON patches. We are currently looking at simply replacing them with Catalyst 9k models.

The 4500-Xs run the same supervisor set and are just as friendly, although contending with only duals vs quads.

Obviously out-of-band management on all supervisors is a necessity.

YMMV, good luck!
-Garrett

On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 12:27 PM Eli Kagan via cisco-nsp <cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Eli Kagan <e.kagan at yahoo.com>
> To: "cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net" <cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net>
> Cc: 
> Bcc: 
> Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2021 20:25:01 +0000 (UTC)
> Subject: Cisco Cat4500 Quad Sup VSS ISSU IOS Upgrade
> Hi all,
> 
> I have a rather old Cat4507R+E pair, running on four Sup7e as a VSS, IOS-XE version 3.8.8E.
> 
> I'd like to understand what's the right way of doing an ISSU on a quad sup system. I am planing to go to version 3.8.10E unless someone has a better suggestion.
>  
> Sharing your first hand experience would be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Thanks,
> Eli
> 
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Eli Kagan via cisco-nsp <cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net>
> To: "cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net" <cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net>
> Cc: 
> Bcc: 
> Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2021 20:25:01 +0000 (UTC)
> Subject: [c-nsp] Cisco Cat4500 Quad Sup VSS ISSU IOS Upgrade
> 
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