Solved: VSS to VSS upgrade

joslinar · ‎10-26-2016

Hello Everybody,

What would be the best way to replace a pair of VSS switches with another pair of VSS switches?

We have a pair of WS-6504-E with VS-S720-10G supervisors at the end of their life-cycle and we replacing them with a new pair of 6504 with VS-SUP2T-10G supervisor. They are connected downstream to 62 access switches with layer 2 port-channels. The problem is that the customer wants 0 downtime. Is there anyway to do this?

Reza Sharifi · ‎10-26-2016

Hi,

The problem is that the customer wants 0 downtime. Is there anyway to do this?

I am not sure about 0 downtime as this is big change.

Do the access switches have extra uplink ports? if they do, you can build the new VSS and than get all the access switches connected to the new VSS. You can also connect the new VSS to the rest of the network, configure them but keep the ports down until cut over time. This will minimize the downtime, as you still need an outage window to move the SVIs from the old VSS to the new one and a also bring up connectivity from VSS to the rest of the network.

HTH

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Reza Sharifi · ‎10-26-2016

Hi,

The problem is that the customer wants 0 downtime. Is there anyway to do this?

I am not sure about 0 downtime as this is big change.

Do the access switches have extra uplink ports? if they do, you can build the new VSS and than get all the access switches connected to the new VSS. You can also connect the new VSS to the rest of the network, configure them but keep the ports down until cut over time. This will minimize the downtime, as you still need an outage window to move the SVIs from the old VSS to the new one and a also bring up connectivity from VSS to the rest of the network.

HTH

joslinar · ‎10-26-2016

Thank you very much Reza. I was thinking the same. That is the way I did It in another customer around 3 years ago.