Catalyst 6509 CatOS to IOS conversion

Santipong Vorabhanda · ‎04-19-2010

I have two 6509 in my network. Both are running hybrid CatOS 8.6(3) and IOS 12.1(26)E3 on WS-X6K-S2U-MSFC2. I am planning to convert CatOS to IOS. I found 2 documents on CCO - Document ID: 12031 & 70273. The second document mentions about conversion tool. My questions are as follows:

How complicate is it to convert CatOS to IOS on 6509?
Do I need a conversion tool to convert CatOS configuration statements to IOS configuration statements?
What are precuationary items I should be careful for the conversion?
How can I compare CatOS software feature set with IOS software feature set?
How long downtime do I expect during the conversion?
How difficult is it to fallback to CatOS should things go wrong?

Any additional advise is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Ganesh Hariharan · ‎04-19-2010

I have two 6509 in my network. Both are running hybrid CatOS 8.6(3) and IOS 12.1(26)E3 on WS-X6K-S2U-MSFC2. I am planning to convert CatOS to IOS. I found 2 documents on CCO - Document ID: 12031 & 70273. The second document mentions about conversion tool. My questions are as follows:

How complicate is it to convert CatOS to IOS on 6509?
Do I need a conversion tool to convert CatOS configuration statements to IOS configuration statements?
What are precuationary items I should be careful for the conversion?
How can I compare CatOS software feature set with IOS software feature set?
How long downtime do I expect during the conversion?
How difficult is it to fallback to CatOS should things go wrong?

Any additional advise is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Hi ,

Both the documents are given with brief explanation and step by step procedure,if you don't want to use the Cisco method then try the following steps

1. Make sure the native mode IOS is on an accessible flash device (in this example, I'll use slot0:)

2. Change the Supervisor card config-register to 0x0 which forces it into ROM Monitor.
P4-6006> (enable) set boot config-register 0x0

3. Reboot the switch using the reset command

4. Remove the CONFIG_FILE variable to prevent problems saving the configuration.
NOTE: THIS COMMAND IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

rommon 2 > CONFIG_FILE=
rommon 3 > sync

5. For the new environment variables to take effect, the switch must be rebooted.

rommon 4 > reset

6. Load the Native mode IOS.

rommon 1 > boot slot0: c6sup12-jsv-mz.121-12c.E2 (example filename)

7. It will take at least 60 seconds before you see any indication the switch is loading.
Once booted, configure the switch to load the IOS on power up.

Router>enable
Router#conf t
Router(config)#no service config
Router(config)#boot system slot0:c6sup12-jsv-mz.121-12c.E2
Router(config)#config-register 0x2102
Router(config)#end
Router# write mem
Router# reload

Hope to Help !!

Ganesh.H

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Santipong Vorabhanda · ‎04-19-2010

Thank you for your response.

How about the configuration statements? Do I need a tool to convert the statements? From your response, it doesn't seem like a long window is expected for downtime, correct?

Ganesh Hariharan · ‎04-19-2010

Thank you for your response.
How
about the configuration statements?  Do I need a tool to convert the
statements?  From your response, it doesn't seem like a long window is
expected for downtime, correct?

Hi,

You need a coversion tool check out the Cisco EDI CATos to IOS conversion tool and procedure to do teh same,Always recommended to have buffers planned in downtime because you dont know what can happen at any time but if you follow as per the procedure in the links every thing should work fine.

http://www.ciscosystems.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_tech_note09186a0080816fbc.shtml#overview1

Hope to Help !!

Ganesh.H

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Santipong Vorabhanda · ‎04-19-2010

How about wconvertit0-12.zip?

Ganesh Hariharan · ‎04-19-2010

How about wconvertit0-12.zip?

Both are good as both are rated by cisco in there offcial documents,so it's upto you to select.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_tech_note09186a008070f124.shtml

Hope to Help !!

Ganesh.H

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Santipong Vorabhanda · ‎04-19-2010

The tool you recommended has options to convert CatOS configuration file to a few IOS configuration versions (12.2(xx)). However, there are a long list of "No IOS equivalent for the CatOS command: ...". How can I find out what the IOS supported commands might be? Thank you.