WAAS Upgrade - Few questions

[Zubair.Sayed_2]

Hi All.

We have the following in our WAAS deployment. All CM's and WAE's are running v 4.4.1.12.

> Primary CM

> Standby CM

> 7 x  WAE's (functioning as Application Accelerators)

I tried upgrading one of the WAE's the other day to v 4.4.5c.4  and received an error that the Primary CM needs to be upgraded first before any of the WAE's.

My questions are as follows:

1. The Standby CM and 1 of the WAE's are in our QA enviroment - can I upgrade the Standby CM and WAE in the QA lab  or do I need to upgrade the Primary CM first and then the Standby CM and WAE's etc. I basically would like to ensure the latest version works well before rolling this out and the QA lab is the best place to do this without affecting production ???

2. I noticed v 5.x.x is released and I would prefer to upgrade to this version. Would I first need to upgrade all the CM's & WAE's to the latest version in the v 4.4.5.x release or can I jump straight from v 4.4.1.12 to v 5.x.x.x ???

Regards

Zubair

[Felix Arrieta · Accepted solution]

hello there,

1- You can upgrade the standby and any WAE's on your LAB, but this is not the best practice.. I sense issues with the CMS database..if the standby and the CM are on different subnets you won't be able to check on the Standby status once it comes back from the upgrade.

Also just to clarify,  it is a prerequisite to  upgrade the secondary Central Manager before you upgrade the Primary Central Manager, as described in Upgrading the Standby Central Manager.

2- You can  upgrade directly to version 5.0.x.  refer to the update Paths chart below:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/upgrade/guide/waas_upgrade-50.html#wp42513

I am confident  the new version 5.x will do it's job ok...

have a nice day!

[Zubair.Sayed_2]

Hi Felix

Thanks a lot for the information.

I will continue to upgrade the Standby CM and advise. I have marked answer as correct.

Do you also have some information about how do I cluster or load balance the CM's ? We have a Primary CM in DC1 and Standby CM in DC2, what is the best way to cluster these CM's or load balance etc ?

Regards

Z

[Felix Arrieta]

Hi Z,

Thanks for your response, in regards your  Primary and Standby CM's  question; database tables, configurations, group polices should be sync'd up, this happens automatically.I  just suggest to make sure your devices time settings are right.

Time settings is very important for the sync to work fine, best way is to use an NTP server.

Please find the attached link to configure NTP and timezone:

Configuration Guide:

================

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/v417/configuration/guide/other.html#wp1042418

Command Reference:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/waas/waas/v417/command/reference/glob_cfg.html#wp1496245

any other questions let me know,

cheers!