ACS Upgrade from V.8.6F10 to V8.7F7

[SAKET_5]

Hey Guys,

I know we are a little behind the schedule and it also seems a bit out of track to upgrade the ACS to V8.7F7 when V.8.8 is around the corner. Unfortunately timelines do not allow us to wait till the ACS8.8 is available to us here in Brisbane. We have been told by HP that the program cards may not be available until mid May but even that timeframe is not certain - could take longer!

So, the plan is to upgrade the ACS on our HSG80 Controllers to ACS8.7F7 as we already have the program cards for this rev. A coupla questions:

1. Is it possible to upgrade from ACS8.6F10 to ACS8.7F1 (I believe this is what the program card comes with!) directly and then apply each ACS patch in sequence till we hit ACS8.7F7? I am assuming we can't directly go to 8.7F7 from V.8.6F10!!

2. We have to perform this upgrade atleast 12 times as we have 6 pairs of HSG80 all requiring the upgrade. Is it possible to perform the upgrade of one controller + apply all the patches and then reboot this controller - take the card away and then just use this card to replicate the upgrade on all the rest of the controllers without having to repeatedly perform the same exercise 11 times!?

Your responses would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Saket.

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi Saket,

the patches are stored in the NVRAM of the controller itself, not on the cards, so the "Replication" method won't work. You have to swap the card on each controller and then load the patches afterward.

Procedure:
1) unload patches for ACS 8.6 with CLCP
2) Shutdown controller
3) switch serial cable to 2nd controller and repeat steps 1 & 2
4) Swap card in 1st controller
5) Restart controller
6) Load ACS 8.7 patches 2 through 7 in sequence with CLCP. I have a macro with patches 2 thru 4 as a single KEAterm-script, if you want it. You'd still need to apply 5, 6 and 7 individually.
7) Reboot controller
- Repeat the steps 4-7 for 2nd controller

That's just the basic steps. It's been a while since I've done this, so I could have forgotten something!

Regards,
Stephen

[Uwe Zessin]

You don't need to unload old patches unless the controller's NVRAM is full. A newer ACS version will ignore old patches. I would rather keep them for a while in case you need to downgrade.

[Alan Strand]

Dont feel bad, we just did a rolling upgrade from 8.6S-13 to 8.7S-7. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this without taking everything down and it worked just fine. I believe you will have to do this 12 times. My HP guy had a combined script we used to apply all the patches in one shot. Just follow the directions for a rolling upgrade and should work fine.

[SAKET_5]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the comments.

Stephen/Alan, do you mind sharing the script and provide a bit of info on what platform, what kits are required to run them.

Regards,
Saket.

[SAKET_5]

Hi All,

Is anyone aware of any Fabric Switch Firmware upgrade requirement for ACS Upgrade? Do the switches need to run a certain FOS for ACS upgrade and why?

Thanks.

[SAKET_5]

Another quick one,

do we need to apply patches 11, 12 & 13 to ACS 8.6F10 before we can insert the ACS V.8.7 F1 card or can we go directly from ACS V8.6F10 to ACS V.8.7F1?

Thanks.

[Josef Hoeckner]

You do not need to go to 8.6-13 before the upgrade, you can go directly to 8.7-1 and than install patches. For the fabric take a look at the current support streams for HSG 80. If you have not done much at the fabric in the last 12 Month you would typically need a new firmware.

hope this helps

kind regards
Josef