<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div id="yiv1134542064"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><div class="yiv1134542064jive-rendered-content"><div>I am planning an upgrade for a (3) node 7835-H1 cluster running 7.1(5)SU2 to a (3) node cluster running 8.6(2)a on VMs.</div><div>Since
these servers only support a bridged upgrade I was wondering if I could
do the following to reduce the risk and amount of downtime required for
the extended "refresh" upgrade.</div><div style="min-height:8pt;height:8pt;padding:0px;"> </div><div>1. Install 7.1(5)SU2 on a 7845-H2 lab server</div><div>2. Perform a DRS restore on this lab server from the production 7.1(5) publisher</div><div>3. Upgrade the lab server to 8.6(2)</div><div>4. Perform a DRS backup of 8.6(2)</div><div>5. Restore the DRS backup on 8.6(2) Publisher VM (pre-built in an isolated environment using the same IP address).</div><div>6. Build Subscriber VMs in isolated lab environment using the same IP addresses.</div><div>7. Switch routing from the production environment to the pre-built lab environment.</div><div style="min-height:8pt;height:8pt;padding:0px;"> </div><div>I find this very appealing since our original cluster will still be running untouched in case we have to switch back.<br></div><div style="min-height:8pt;height:8pt;padding:0px;"> </div><div>Any concerns with this
"modified bridge" approach?</div><div>The
only concern that I see is that the subscribers will not be connected
to the lab publisher server when I do the upgrade from 7.1 to 8.6.</div><div>Is that going to be an issue? Any other concerns?<br></div><div><br></div><div>I see a few posts with similar questions, but I just want to be clear about the subscriber portion.</div><div>I do not think that the disconnected subscribers should matter, but would love to hear from someone who has used this method.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Ryan<br></div></div></div></div></div> </div></body></html>