Switches, Hubs, and Modems
1748185 Members
4301 Online
108759 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

 
SOLVED
Go to solution
V.S.Abhijith.
Occasional Advisor

Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

Hi ,

I have around three hundred Procurve switches in my environment.Models are 5308,2524,2650,2510(70% are of this type),5406 and 2824.I need to update the firmware of these switches to latest level. I am thinking of two approaches,

1)Update all the switches in one go through PCM+ tool. - My question here is can PCM+ support updation of these many switches in one go ? If not how many updates it can do parallely ? Will there be any issues or impact to network if I do it one go ?

2) Second approach I am thinking is - Doing the updates in batches and doing the update over a period of time. Either through PCM+ or Manually. I feel risk involved will be less with this approach.

Could you suggest me which approach would be best ? Ours a switching network with many Vlans, Which have been populated in almost all switches. There is one core switch , Five Distribution and rest all are access level switches.

Thank you,
-Abhijit.
6 REPLIES 6
Drew Redman
Valued Contributor
Solution

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

I'm not aware of any limitations on the # of simultaneous firmware upgrades you can do through PCM. This would be the preferred method for doing it compared to flashing manually.

All of your switches except for the 2524/2512's can be flashed in production and rebooted at a later date during a maintenance window. The 2500 only has a single flash image and will automatically reboot immediately after an upgrade.

If you do them all with PCM at the same time, just make sure you don't set anything to reboot automatically, otherwise you will lose access to some switches in the middle of the upgrade when others start rebooting.

Bengt Sjoberg
Frequent Advisor

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

According to my experience you can use the PCM+ tool to order upgrades of many switches in one go but the actual update process only run one upgrade at a time so an upgrade of 10 switches could easily take one hour...
Drew Redman
Valued Contributor

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

PCM 2.x or 3.x will definitely do more than one switch at a time.
Javed Padinhakara
Respected Contributor

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

Abhijit:

I would suggest you go in for (2).

That said, the factor which you should consider more is from the way the devices are laid out in your network and plan accordingly. Some points to consider:

a)Single flash switches like 2524/2512, as mentioned by Drew, would reboot automatically upon a software update, which means that administrators should expect a longer interval when using PCM to upgrade the flash of these devices.
b)Batch your switches in such a way that there is least downtime
c)use the "Schedule" option for each such batch, spaced appropriately, to push the firmwares to the switches from PCM. Each device will take about three minutes to update, unless the "Reboot" option is selected. Then, PCM Plus can take 10 to 15 minutes per device to complete software upgrades.

@Sjoberg:
Yes, you are right.PCM updates each device in serial, and not parallel, order.

Javed
V.S.Abhijith.
Occasional Advisor

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

Hi,

Many thanks for your reply. We have choosen second option...

Thank you,
-Abhjith
V.S.Abhijith.
Occasional Advisor

Re: Switch Firmware Update through PCM+ Or Manual

We found doing the update in batches is a good approach as suggested in the replies.