[j-nsp] upgrading M120 directly from 8.5 to 9.3

[Evan Williams]

I agree with both Jared & Brad, I would be reluctant to attempt an In 
service upgrade, in fact be inclened to carry out an upgrade on test/spare 
chassis and swap REs leaving the existing RE at 8.5 to swap back if any 
problems are encountered, Having had to undertake the downgrade from 9.2 to 
8.5, this can be very difficult procedure. IMHO I have endevoured to store 
JUNOS releases, to get around the EOL and withdrawn releases, it can next to 
impossible to get back releases even from official equipment suppliers. Also 
often RMA devices will arrive with last supported Junos, so good practice to 
keep JUNOS and a Compact flash with bootable JUNOS just in case.

Hope this helps and good luck

Evan Williams



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jared Mauch" <jared at puck.nether.net>
To: "Brad Fleming" <bdfleming at kanren.net>
Cc: <juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net>
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: [j-nsp] upgrading M120 directly from 8.5 to 9.3


>
> On Jan 11, 2010, at 3:41 PM, Brad Fleming wrote:
>
>> My experience is to always test the upgrade on a spare device; especially 
>> if its an "unsupported" upgrade path. A similar chassis running the same 
>> config will help determine what parts of the config are likely to change. 
>> If possible, I'd suggest attaching your spare device to your in-service 
>> network and make sure services will continue to work. I know this all 
>> seems like a huge pain, but if you're anything like me you only upgrade 
>> software every couple years (unless there's a major problem).
>>
>> If you don't have spare gear available, I'd suggest opening a TAC case 
>> and asking for an official, supported upgrade path using software that's 
>> available today. That way if something goes wrong, you already have a 
>> ticket open with the basic info.
>
> +1
>
> We asked Juniper about this and this, and I'm not sure they've released an 
> 'official' policy around this.  I suggest following the usual 
> standard-operational-practices and doing the following:
>
> 1) Check that your OOB works
> 2) Test in lab [if possible]
> 3) Load the code on local media (including all relevant jinstall images, 
> including current one if you need to back-out for some unforseen reason).
> 4) (Some people may not like this, but ...) try jumping to the release you 
> want directly with the jinstall.  Here's where #1 is *MOST* important!!!!
>
> Somtimes there are some random failures, mgd issues and config hating 
> processes.  You want to do something like:
>
> request system software add delay-restart no-validate reboot 
> /var/tmp/jinstall-13.0R1.tgz
>
> You may need to tweak your config if something 'odd' has happened between 
> reelases, like rewriting of the way bgp or whatnot works.
>
> You should understand that the no-validate clearly comes with caveats, but 
> doing this should make the jump easier.
>
> here's to improving the process and finding a document on jumping from 
> EEOL to current software on the JTAC site..
>
> - Jared
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