cisco ios upgradeation by remote

[Srinivas N]

Dear Friends,

I have a cisco catalyst 2950 switch (flash:c2950-i6q4l2-mz.121-22.EA1b.bin), in remote location with public IP,

plz let me know how to upgrade ios remotely,

by that time running configuration will go?

how much down time is required and ?

is it posible to upgrade by online........?

Thanks & Regards,

Srinivas.

[Richard Burts]

Srinivas

It is certainly possible to upgrade the code for a 2950 remotely. The process that you go through is the same whether you are on a local connection or are on a remote connection. There are a few dependencies that you need to address when the upgrade will be done remotely:

- you need to assure that you do have remote management access to the switch. (some switches are configured to only accept management connection from local addresses)

- you need to assure that the remote switch does have tftp access to a tftp server where the new image is located.

As you plan for a remote upgrade you do need to recognize the possibility that your remote session might suffer an interruption (if the ISP has a problem, etc) but this does not prevent you from doing a remote upgrade.

As you plan the upgrade you will need to decide whether you will use just the bin file and do a simple upgrade of the operating image or whether you will use the tar file and will upgrade the associated management tools as you upgrade the operating image.

Once you have made this decision the upgrade process is pretty simple. You copy the file(s) to flash in the switch, you verify that the switch will boot the new image, and you boot the switch. You can do this as well on a remote connection as you can on a local connection.

HTH

Rick

[Marvin Rhoads]

Hi Rick,

Note that 2950 switches support not only tftp but also ftp and rcp for file systems operations. Reference the configuration guide here.

Over a remote connection, it will often be more reliable to use one of the latter transfer methods.

- Marvin

[Leo Laohoo]

2950 reboot will take approximately 4 minutes.

Rick's got a good point.  The best bet is to "drop" the IOS into a client in the remote site.  You install or run TFTPd32 in the same client and copy the IOS from the remote client into the switch.

When I mean the remote client I mean a client directly connected to the switch in question.

If you downloaded the TAR file, the command is "arch tar /x tftp:///.tar flash:"

The 2950 does not support "download-sw" command so before you run the command above, you need to delete the existing IOS directory using the command "delete /f /r flash:".

Hope this helps.

[Richard Burts]

Leo

Thanks for affirming my general approach to upgrading the code on a 2950. Your estimate of time being 4 minutes agrees with my experience. I was so involved in thinking about approaches to upgrade, that I forgot that one of Srinivas questions was about outage time. So thanks for filling that in. And your discussion of the archive command to actually do the download is a helpful complement to the discussion. So +5 to you.

HTH

Rick

[Leo Laohoo]

Thank you very much for the ratings Rick. 

[Richard Burts]

Leo

I am quite a believer in giving credit where credit is due, and your comments to supplement my suggestions quite deserve the rating.

HTH

Rick

[Leo Laohoo]

Oh yeah.  Forgot another thing ...

After you drop the IOS TAR file into a remote client, make sure you compare the hash value against the Cisco website.  If the hash value don't match then your file could be corrupt or incomplete.  If this happens, please download the file from the Cisco website again.