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JG_62160's avatar
JG_62160
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Aug 18, 2009

Upgrade from 9.3.0 to 10.0 questions

I have two LTM 1500's running version 9.3.0 and I'm ready to upgrade to 10.0. I'm running Active/Standby so I presume it should work like this:

 

 

1. Upgrade the standby unit to 10.0, verify it's working properly

 

 

2. Failover to the newly upgraded unit

 

 

3. Upgrade the original active unit which is now standby

 

 

Will I have any issues with failing over from the Active unit which will be running 9.3.0 to the Standby which will be running 10.0 after the upgrade? We are running HA with network failover as well as having the serial cables directly attached.

 

 

I've found some posts stating you can't failover units running different versions of code so I want to make sure this is the correct procedure. Thanks in advance!
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  • dennypayne's avatar
    dennypayne
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    Aug 18, 2009
    Hi,

     

     

    You can't sync between different versions (so make sure they're in sync before the upgrade), and it's not a supported config to run on different versions, but I have just verified that the newly upgraded unit on v10 will stay in standby mode with the serial cables connected, and I expect it to go active once the other unit is taken offline.

     

     

    So, yes, your procedure should work fine. I have not tested this scenario without the serial cables though (using network failover).

     

     

    Denny
  • The_Bhattman's avatar
    The_Bhattman
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    Aug 18, 2009
    I concur with Denny. Further more you need to realize that the once you reboot the standby unit any mirrored connections you may have are gone, especially if one of the units is on a different version. I have tested this with network fail over and unfortunately it hasn't worked for me - however, this is based on how my F5s are setup. My suggestion is to have a F4 account manager setup a case and have an engineer available during this cut over to make sure you can get assistance quickly in case something goes wrong.

     

     

    Thanks,

     

    CB

     

  • JG_62160's avatar
    JG_62160
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    Aug 19, 2009
    Thanks guys. Let me throw this out there as well and see if it makes any difference in what you've already suggested:

     

     

    My plan is to upgrade the standby unit after hours while there will be no traffic flowing through them. Once that unit has been upgraded to 10 I will failover to him so he becomes the active unit. At that point my Management team would like to wait and make sure traffic flows as it should the next morning. If the traffic isn't flowing as expected we'd fail back to the unit still running 9.3. If all is well I would perform the upgrade on the other unit that was initially the active unit.

     

     

    Does that make sense and sound reasonable?

     

     

  • dennypayne's avatar
    dennypayne
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    Aug 19, 2009
    Yes that's a workable approach, of course there are 2 installation slots on each unit, so when you upgrade to 10 you can do it on the currently non-running slot, leaving your current installation untouched. Then you can always fail back simply by using the switchboot command and rebooting back into your old install. That would keep you from having to spread the upgrade over 2 maintenance windows.

     

     

    Denny
  • JG_62160's avatar
    JG_62160
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Aug 20, 2009
    Just wanted to follow-up and let you guys know how it went. After the upgrade I was having problems failing over to the upgraded box as it was showing offline. After some research on Devcentral I tried adding the Peer Management address in the Network Failover tab to the new box was able to successfully failover to the upgraded box. I assumed it would've kept that information? Anyway, thanks again for the help.
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Aug 20, 2009
    misjdg1, thanks for posting your findings and glad things have worked out for you!

     

     

    -Joe