[cisco-voip] Upgrade Methods

[Casper, Steven]

If at all possible I suggest running the upgrade in a lab environment first. This gives you an opportunity to make sure  you are familiar with the process and observe the upgrade behavior. Every major release upgrade seems to vary somewhat and this  seems particularly important in this case after reading all of the SBD/ITL issues out there. The lab also gives you a chance to test new features and make sure the upgrade does not create problems for features that you already use that are critical for your business. In the past few years we have identified several issues in the lab that would have had a serious impact on next day operations if we had upgraded with these bugs active.

Within reason we try to duplicate our lab environment to match production including adjunct systems such as SIP Trunk, QSIG, call recording and Informacast. I understand the hassle and expense of standing up a  lab system like this but if you are running an enterprise UC environment with thousands of devices it is worth the effort and expense.

Steve

From: cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Frank Arrasmith
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2012 7:22 PM
To: cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
Subject: [cisco-voip] Upgrade Methods

Hey all,
  I have a quick question about best practices/tips during system upgrade, particularly on the Linux appliance models.  My previous experience with upgrades has been primarily in a  lab, which have always gone fine, However, in my new enterprise, we have an 8 server cluster(pub,5 subs, 2 tftp)  running 7.1.5, with critical uptime requirements.  Other than recommended procedures from the Cisco Upgrade guides, what other practices or additional procedures do you employ to ensure a smooth upgrade, and/or to speed the process along?

1. Do you upgrade all in one shot, long maintenance window?  Install, Reboot , Test?
2. Do you do spread out the install over a few days?  Install over a few maintenance windows utilizing inactive partitions, then schedule restart and testing for another maintenance window?  how long of a time period is it acceptable to spread out?
3. Other then basic call testing, and ensuring that appropriate services are started/running( we distribute service between the subs), what other checks do you include?


Thanks in advance.

Frank Arrasmith



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