[cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... sigh

Wed Feb 12 12:56:58 EST 2014

If I had a (supported) VMWare environment to do this all in, I would have considered it. Unfortunately, timing did not allow for this. 

But it is a good idea. 

--- 
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A. 
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure 
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) 
University of Guelph 

519‐824‐4120 Ext 56354 
lelio at uoguelph.ca 
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs 
Room 037, Animal Science and Nutrition Building 
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Jonathan Madziarczyk" <jmad at cityofevanston.org> 
To: "Ryan Ratliff (rratliff)" <rratliff at cisco.com>, "Lelio Fulgenzi" <lelio at uoguelph.ca> 
Cc: "cisco-voip voyp list" <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net> 
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 12:11:42 PM 
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 

I’m sure this is in no way supported or condoned, but would setting up a 60day eval vmware box, doing a jump upgrade to 9.x in the VMware environment, then essentially “jumping” back to 9.x on MCS (DRS backup and restore) and then installing licenses do what you’re looking for? 

From: cisco-voip [mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Ryan Ratliff (rratliff) 
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 11:01 AM 
To: Lelio Fulgenzi 
Cc: cisco-voip voyp list 
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 

What was stated earlier is correct for you Lelio. 

Go back to the old docs, forget you ever heard of a thing called Jump upgrade, and move forward like you would have otherwise. 

Yes, you do need to apply your rehosted license AFTER the DRS restore. CSCtb86875 is the particular defect you'll hit if you apply the new licenses before the restore. 

-Ryan 

On Feb 11, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Matthew Loraditch < MLoraditch at heliontechnologies.com > wrote: 

Let us know how it goes. 

I'm probably exaggerating a bit with that millions number ;) 

Sent from my iPad 

On Feb 11, 2014, at 7:08 PM, "Lelio Fulgenzi" < lelio at uoguelph.ca > wrote: 

Thanks Matthew. I will be reviewing the standard CallManager v9.1 upgrade document in the morning and see how that goes with the license file that I have which is tied to the offline pub's MAC address. 

As far as the millions of questions are concerned, not sure what to say about that. I suspect there are not a lot of people out there doing what I'm doing, but am I the only one? wow. I was on the collaboration user group session and brought this up, and I'm pretty sure I saw another hand up for the question as well. Unfortunately, it didn't get much attention. 

Lelio 

--- 
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A. 
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure 
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) 
University of Guelph 

519 ‐ 824 ‐ 4120 Ext 56354 
lelio at uoguelph.ca 
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs 
Room 037, Animal Science and Nutrition Building 
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Matthew Loraditch" < MLoraditch at heliontechnologies.com > 
To: "Lelio Fulgenzi" < lelio at uoguelph.ca > 
Cc: "cisco-voip" < cisco-voip at puck.nether.net > 
Sent: Tuesday, 11 February, 2014 5:37:40 PM 
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 
Well I mean cisco supports your migration method in general. Just forget there was ever a process called jump and what would you have done? Reinstall on new hardware, restore, rehost licenses and then upgrade (using the refresh file because of the version in question). You only need the original 1.1 refresh file at that point. Then you wouldn’t even be modifying anything to do with licensing. 

I will say I have not heard in all of the forums I participate in, customer, partner, twitter of anyone else doing what you are doing. There were a million questions during the jump process from all the partner SEs directed to the BU and none of them was can I do this with hardware. 

Also that bug you mention was resolved with refresh file 1.3 the way I read it, hence no error for you. 

< p class=MsoNormal> 

Matthew G. Loraditch – CCNP-Voice, CCNA-R&S, CCDA 
1965 Greenspring Drive 
Timonium, MD 21093 

direct voice. 443.541.1518 
fax. 410.252.9284 

Twitter | Facebook | Website | Email Support <� J/p> 
Support Phone. 410.252.8830 
<image002.png> 

From: Lelio Fulgenzi [ mailto:lelio at uoguelph.ca ] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 5:00 PM 
To: Matthew Loraditch 
Cc: cisco-voip 
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 

lol. thanks Matthew. 

I think I'm going to have to engage our partner for an official answer this week, while I try out some scenarios. Bottom line is, if Cisco isn't going to of ficially support this or help out, then I have to go to management and let them know, and they can raise the roof. ;) It would be nice to at least get a "no, sorry, the COP refresh file does not properly disable upgrade restrictions on MCS hardware" - or something like that. 

I can't believe I'm the only one out here that doesn't have the money to go to VM just yet, and has enough hardware to do an off-line install with supported hardware. I guess if the supported way to is to get licenses rehosted, than I'm OK with that, as long as our partner will support us when the requests go to licensing. 

Interestingly enough, I was reading the main page ( https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-35163 ) and found the following bug listed there ( https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCtb86875 ) which states that I need install the license after the DRS restore. So this would make the correct order: 

    1. install v7 
    2. install COP/refresh 
    3. do DRS 
    4. reboot servers 
    5. perform dbreplicate fixes if required 
    6. upload license 
    7. perform upgrades 

We'll have to see how my next test goes. 

Funny thing is, the license reporting page shows no problem with the licenses. Weird.<� (Jbr> 
Oh well, tomorrow's another day. 

--- 
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A. 
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure 
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) 
University of Guelph 

519 ‐ 824 ‐ 4120 Ext 56354 
lelio at uoguelph.ca 
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs 
Room 037, Animal Science a nd Nutrition Building 
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 

From: "Matthew Loraditch" < MLoraditch at heliontechnologies.com > 
To: "Lelio Fulgenzi" < lelio at uoguelph.ca > 
Cc: "cisco-voip" < cisco-voip at pu ck.nether.net > 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 4:37:50 PM 
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 
Yes you are technically correct about the refresh file. The original version was designed to allow the OS upgrades that happened with <8.6 to 8.6+. They then added the removal of the license check with v1.2 and 1.3 of the refresh solely for the Jump upgrade. So yes you will need the refresh file to install 9.1.2 but you won’t have to deal with the licensing crud if you rehost. 

<� (Jspan style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The jump upgrade is the recommended path because VMWare is the recommended path what you are doing is what every cisco partner, TAC and sales employee doesn’t want you to do, but technically still supports. We all still love you Lelio, but I know the PM in charge of the OS stuff and he’d cringe knowing you were doing this :) 

I would install your licenses before the refresh file but I’d guess it won’t matter. 

<image003.jpg> 
Matthew G. Loraditch – CCNP-Voice, CCNA-R&S, CCDA 
1965 Greenspring Drive 
Timonium, MD 21093 

direct voice. 443.541.1518 
fax. 410.252.9284 

Twitter | Facebook | Website | Email Support 
Support Phone. 410.252.8830 
<image002.png> 

From: Lelio Fulgenzi [ mailto:lelio at uoguelph.ca ] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 4:17 PM 
To: Matthew Loraditch 
Cc: cisco-voip 
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 

Hi Matthew, re-hosting licenses is definitely an option. I wanted to make sure that this path _didn't_ work first, because it is the recommended/advertised approach. 

I'm lucky in that I already have the licenses for my test cluster which match this isolated publisher MAC, since they were issued on this isolated pub first, and I rehosted to another one due to some issues. 

For my production cluster, it me ans rehosting to the isolated pub MAC and going forward. 

Your comment regarding "the only reason you need the refresh file is because 6.1 and 7.1 can’t read licenses when running on VMWare" is interesting because according to the readme file, it's for more than that. In fact, it doesn't mention licensing at all. 
<blockquote>

The refresh upgrade COP file delivers changes to the user experience on the CLI and GUI that are related to a refresh upgrade, and basic functionality needed to support refresh upgrades. Refresh upgrade is a new feature in 8.6(x) that allows upgrades between incompatible OS versions. 

The question then becomes, at what point do I install the license files, before or after the COP_refresh file? 

Lelio 

--- 
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A. 
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure 
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) 
University of Guelph 

519 ‐ 824 ‐ 4120 Ext 56354 
< span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>lelio at uoguelph.ca 
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs 
Room 037, Animal Science and Nutrition Building 
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 

From: "Matthew Loraditch" < MLoraditch at heliontechnologies.com > 
To: "Lelio Fulgenzi" < lelio at uoguelph.ca >, "cisco-voip" < cisco-voip at puck.nether.net > 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 3:42:06 PM 
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 
Just being devil’s advocate but since you aren’t going to VM, why don’t you just rehost the license files. It seems like you may have spent more time trying to JUMP when the only reason you need the refresh file is because 6.1 and 7.1 can’t read licenses when running on VMWare. You can do that once and since it’s hardware the MAC isn’t going to change no matter how many times you have to run through the install. Seems easier to open that case once and wait a few hours for rehosted licenses. 

<image003.jpg> 
Matthew G. Loraditch – CCNP-Voice, CCNA-R&S, CCDA 
1965 Greenspring Drive 
Timonium, MD 21093 

direct voice. 443.541.1518 
fax. 410.252.9284 

Twitter | Facebook | Website | Email Support 
Support Phone. 410.252.8830 
<image002.png> 

< /span> 

From: cisco-voip [ mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net ] On Behalf Of Lelio Fulgenzi 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 3:34 PM 
To: cisco-voip 
Subject: [cisco-voip] Upgrades prohibited... *sigh* 

OK, so, I've attempted the upgrade from v7.1(5b)SU3 to v9.1(2)SU1 and I've got the dreaded "upgrades prohibited during license grace period" error. *big sigh* 

I'm using this as a resource: 

https://supportforums.cisco.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/35163-6-15369435/Drive_to_Nine_Jump_upgrade_versions_4.1.3-7.1.5_to_9.1.2-3%5B1%5D.pdf 

Some comments: 

    * I am not recreating my cluster on VM ware, I am using supported MCS servers 
    * I installed 7.1(5b)SU3 via a "install with patch" process, using 7.1(3a) media 
    * I installed the the v1.3 COP refresh file next and did NOT reboot the cluster < o:p> 
    * I performed a DRS restore and recovered first the publisher, then the subscriber 
    * I rebooted the subscriber first, then the publisher 
    * Performed dbreplication recovery (with an unfortunate reboot in the middle) 

I guess the biggest question is whether or not the COP refresh files disables the licenses restrictions on MCS servers or not. Or whether I should attempt this again, or call the TAC for them to allow upgrades via root. 

I'm on an isolated network, so it means some fancy routing on a laptop if the TAC is necessary. 

Suggestions?< /span> 

Lelio 

--- 
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A. 
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure 
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) 
University of Guelph 

519 ‐ 824 ‐ 4120 Ext 56354 
lelio at uoguelph.ca 
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs < span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> 
Room 037, Animal Science and Nutrition Building 
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 

</blockquote>

<image003.jpg><image002.png>________________________________ _______________ 
cisco-voip mailing list 
cisco-voip at puck.nether.net 
https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-voip 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-voip/attachments/20140212/cda77135/attachment.html>