I am upgrading the OE on an AX100. One of the preliminary steps is to upgrade the firmware on the Brocade 3250 FO switch. I am going from version 4.2 to version 5.1. I am told I must fist go to version 4.4 and then to 5.1. Has anyone had experience with this upgrade?
I believe Ed is getting off of the original question, which was about actual experience with this particular upgrade. My experience was that in my environment I didn't have any issues because of the date. It's always a good idea to do the appropriate preliminary research and take the typical precautionary measures when doing any firmware or san work.
(I do find it contradictory though, that Ed suggests doing these steps in this thread and then suggesting to having only EMC technicians do the update in another thread.)
Brocade does not support upgrading from more than two previous releases, for example, upgrading from Fabric OS v4.4.0 to v5.1.x is supported but upgrading from Fabric OS v4.2.0 or a previous release directly to v5.1.x is not. In other words, to upgrade a switch from Fabric OS v4.2.0 or a previous release to v5.1.0 requires a two-step process: first upgrade to v4.4.0 or v5.0.1 and then upgrade to v5.1.0.
Setting the date as GlenH suggests is only needed if you are running NTP to keep your switch clocks sync'd. Otherwise you don't really need to do this. I did not do this when I went through this update, but I don't have NTP enabled on the switches. The switches did not reboot themselves.
Resetting the time using the date command should always be done as a precautionary measure to synchronise the hardware and system clocks. If these clocks are too far apart, the switch will do a cold reset after the firmware is loaded and you will stop I/O on the switch. Most times you will get away with it, but its better to be safe than sorry.
I don't believe it makes any difference if you are using NTP or not except for the fact that if you are using NTP, you have to first disable NTP before you set the time as per the instructions in emc136853.
Then you are a lucky person. Because it is a brocade defect and as Glen pointed out, mentioned in the primus emc136853. That is why it was taken up in our upgrade procedure and upgrade path, not have customer run into this defect. cheers,
Please refer to the release notes, to view the defects with any firmware of any product. It doesn't matter which OEM product, software, hardware any of them.
