Hi, my name is Cindy, I'm from the Dell Networking Team. Today I'm going to go over how to upgrade the switches using CLI. In my MX chassis I have two MX9116n's in SmartFabric and they're on code that's on 10.4. So before we get started we're going to need to download the packages.
We're going to want to go to support.dell.com and you can put your service tag or choose the product that you are working on. In my case I chose mx9116n, I didn't put a service tag, either or is fine. From here we're gonna click that little arrow down and look at the packages that we have.
So we can't go to 10 10.5.2.4, that's too big of a jump from a 10.4 release what we're gonna need to do is go to 10.5.0.7, and then from there we should be able to step it to the latest.
So you're going to go ahead and and download the package. When you click on 10.5.0.7 it's going to take you to this landing page and you're going to see two different files. One is the release notes and the other is a Dell Update Package.
Because we're doing this in CLI you're going to need to extract the Dell Update Package, So after you download the package you will have an option to execute the file, and when you execute the file you should be able to click on this 'extract' button and then save it in whatever location that you want it and what we're actually looking for is the payload.
So once it's extracted you're going to see that all the contents are put into a folder, and there's another folder called 'payload'. We're actually interested in the payload folder and here we go. 10.5.0.7 is our file so this is the file that you're going to put on your ftp or tftp or even a usb.
You need to put it and get it to the switch somehow, whichever method you choose that's fine. So once you have your file on the ftp server you're going to log into your switches. I'm going to go ahead and restart these sessions I am SSHing to the management modules of the mx. The reason why I do this is so that we have a serial console.
It's really desirable to have serial console when you're updating your switches especially if you're remote, so this is the best way to do it. So you're going to log in as root, so it's the same credentials as you're going to use when you log into the GUI, and then once you're logged into the console you're going to use the RACADM commands.
So you're going to do 'racadm connect -m' and then you're going to choose your switch, so my session on the left is the lead management module so I know my switch is in the a1 slot. And then my backup is going to be in the a2 slot so I'm going to specify switch 2.
So because we are on an ancient version - really really old - how do you know which one's the master which one's the backup? There is a shell command that you can run.
I'm gonna go ahead and run it, so you're gonna type 'system bash', 'sudo -i' and then you're gonna provide the switch password again, and as you can see now we're in root.
The command that you're going to run is 'ps -ax' and then you're going to grep it to dnv. So we're going to do this on both of our switches and run it on a1 and run it on a2.
So how you know which one is the master there, it's going to have the rest_server.py files on it as you can see on the a2 switch there is none, and so we know a2 is the backup.
So in SmartFabric we always upgrade the backup switch first and then the master second. We don't want the failover to happen until the second switch, and it also it ensures that we don't run into issues because if we do have to fail over and something happens, I mean it just reduces the chances of us running into an issue.
Now that we've identified the backup unit we're going to go ahead and 'exit' shell, and we're going to start the download process.
So we're going to use the 'image download' command, we're going to copy the file from my ftp server to the image directory so we're just going to go ahead and hit enter, and you could follow the status by typing 'show image status'. As you can see the transfer process is at two percent so we're going to give it a second to download.
Once the download is complete you could do the same on the other switch, same command, 'image download ftp' on a2. We are going to look in the image directory grab that file without spaces and do our 'image install' from the image directory and there we go.
Run 'show image status' and we can see now the progress is showing that it's installing. Once the update is complete and shows success we can do 'show boot' and see that on the standby partition it's 10.5.0.7, and then we could do 'boot system standby' and then 'show boot' again and now our next boot is going to be the standby partition.
So we're going to go ahead and reload the switch. While it's reloading we could start the process on the a1 switch, as you can see the progress is showing that it's installing.
And our other switch appears to be up again and give it a little bit of time to finish loading, and once it's done reloading you should be able to do a 'show version' and see that it's on 10.5.0.7.
And now we should have access to the smart fabric commands. Also, in the user guide it does recommend that you reboot both switches at the same time.
We will see some communication issues between the two switches until they're both on 10.5.0.7. So once the timer completes it will bring up the port channels.
So in our case it's going to be port channel one, and we could do a 'show port-channel summary'. So now we just wait for the second unit to be done installing the packages and when it's complete you could go ahead and reload that switch.
So we'll just wait on that and once the a1 switch has completed installing the packages you could do a 'show boot' and we could see that on the standby unit we see 10.5.0.7.
We're going to 'boot system standby' and now we could see that the next boot will be the standby, and then we go ahead and 'reload'.
So it does take a few minutes for the switch to come fully up since we are serialed in, so generally it's going to sit on that system waiting or system loading and you just give it a minute or two and the switch will start coming up.
In the meantime we should see that a2 is now the master. We should see our networks. The switch can take anywhere between five to ten minutes to come up, as you can see what used to be the master's now the backup.
Link is now up, heartbeat is up, we should now see that the VLT is up and delay restore timer is ticking. So we have another 76 seconds for that to complete, and then once that completes that's when our VLANs get added and the port channel shows up.
So if I look now we're going to see them in a down state, so that's expected. The VLT timer just stopped so it looks like everything is forming, so if we do our 'port-channel summary' command we should see now that everything is up.
So 'show version', 'show smartfabric cluster', 'show smartfabric networks', 'show port-channel summary', 'show vlt 255' and 'show vlt mismatch'.
These are the commands that you should run after you've done the upgrade because hese commands will ensure that everything is working as it should.
So that concludes our video on upgrading the switches using CLI. You guys have a great day.
