Upgrade BIGIP LTM

Hi Mike,

 

 

The best suggestion is to use hardwire failover if the units are within ~30 feet of each other. If that's an option then you don't have to worry about network failover incompatibility between versions.

 

 

If you cannot use hardwire failover, then I suggest disabling the upstream switch ports that connect to the unit you want in standby. Just leave the management port up. This prevents the second unit from trying to ARP for shared IP addresses.

 

 

Aaron

Posted By Mike Rausch on 02/11/2011 10:10 AM

 

I have two BIGIP LTM's that were a redundant pair until I upgraded the stanby unit to verion 10.2 from 9.3.

 

 

I had to change them both to single units because they will not work together with different versions.

 

 

The 9.3 unit is currently running our production web servers and I would like the make the new version my production unit. The problem is....when I shut the interfaces off on the 9.3 unit and bring them up on the 10.2 unit my network goes crazy and nothing will work. I had to turn the 9.3 unit back on and restart both of them to release all of the connections that were causing issues.

 

 

My question is.... would the maintenance mode option eliminate this issue? Or.. do I need to completely disconnect one of the units from the network, bring up the 10.2 unit, upgrade the 9.3 unit, and then bring it back online as the standby unit.????

 

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

 

Thanks

 

Mike

 

 

Mike,

 

 

I'm curious to know how the upgrade process went for you prior to bringing the 10.2 unit back online. We are in the same boat wanting to upgrade our Production 8400's from 9.3.1 to 10.2. Any pitfalls or gotchas I need to worry about?

Regarding upgrading from 9.3 to 10.2, I believe the real path will be a bit more involved. I recently received new gear with 9.4.6 and was planning on using 10.2.1, but found I could not go directly to 10.2 due to the size of the ISOs. I had to upgrade 10.0 and transition the disk from partitions to volumes, then I could get 10.2.1 uploaded and installed. Now I had the luxury of doing this without the burden of production traffic, so I was in more of a get r done mode and did not have to worry about the nuances of making sure traffic migrated smoothly. Matter of fact the 6800s I have in prod will simply be replaced with 3600s to avoid the risks I perceive with doing that upgrade. The 6800s were shipped with a single partition and a CF configured, thus it would leave me with some exposure and an inability to safely roll back, plus the 6800s are nearing the end of their support cycle and we never used that chassis to it's fullest potential.

 

 

HTH,

 

 

 

CarlB

 

hey guys I have been reading all of your threads and I need help with a hardware upgrade from LTM 2000 v9.3 to LTM 2400 v9.4. I have only a window of 2 hrs this saturday at 830 to 1030pm. and some contingency time on sunday. Then i have to fly back out. They are not in active/standby, I believe they are single nodes. is there an easy way to sync the configs or export or import a backup file to the new unit? then do a direct swap of cables?

You can create a config.ucs file to export and import. I would also suggest making a copy of your bigip.conf and bigip.license files in the /config directory.

 

 

The licenses are tied to the specific devices, so you may run into some colorful issues there.

 

 

If you are going to be in a time crunch I would suggest opening up a case with F5 so that you can fully explain your plan and ask about device licenses. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

 

 

If you can mitigate that then it should be very similar to a device RMA which is pretty quick and easy.

how ti upgrade BIGIP LTM 10 t0 11 version

Please read this article: http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/bigip-upgrade-active-standby-11-2-0.html?sr=25267357

 

If you have a support contract and this is your first time, you might want to ask for F5 support's assistance.