safe harbor for IOS XR? recommended version for ASR9000?

[Carlos T]

Hi,

Now working in a new deployment of some ASR9010 at the edge (PE) of an SP network. Questions arise trying to choose the XR software version, Appreciate if anyone can help sharing experiences, and answering few questions.

Is there a safe harbor program for IOS XR software versions?

4.2.0 is the newest available version since 21-dec-2011, but does not have smus yet.

In the other side:

4.1.2 with release date 28-nov-2011 also has not SMUS available to download

4.1.1 with release date 29-jul-2011 has many SMUS available to download.

According to what is available today, what experts recommend? to choose the experienced one = 4.1.1? as seems it is proved one and stable with discovered and available patchs?

Any good or bad experience with this version in the asr9k placed at the edge (PE) of an SP with tipical features and protocols (ospf, mpbgp, ldp, multicast pim ssm, atom)?

Thanks,

Carlos Trujillo.

[kamalimesikoo]

Hi Carlos,

I was also curious about safe harbor code for the ASR9K, but based on what I learned from cisco TAC, no such program is available for the XR code yet.

We are using 4.1.2 with our ASR9010s. The code has been stable so far and all the HA features work as expected. We are running the following in the network.

OSPF

OSPFv3 with a small number of IPv6 routes.

BGP**

BFD

LDP, EoMPLS with a few PWs. MPLS OAM.

IPSLA probes

** In the testing phase I noticed that a BGP peering session to a neighbor that establishes slowly can delay routes learned by BGP north of 12 minutes on an ASR9000 with code 4.1.2 or older.

This problem can be avoided by increasing your update-delay value (default is 120 sec) to allow the neighbor sessions to be established before the timer runs out. For me 150 seconds did the trick. This behavior is addressed in 4.2 but I haven’t tested it. The BGP command is "bgp update-delay" under the process.

After a reload of the chassis, RSPs & line cards will come online and the BGP process starts and goes into read-only mode. Two events can end read-only mode. Updates received from an established neighbor or the 120 seconds on the update-delay runs out. If your eBGP sessions establish after the update-delay timer runs out, it takes 11+ minutes (for me it was 11:36) before you’ll start receiving routers from neighbors.

Hope this helps, I’d love to know which code you went with and how it’s working out for you.

[Vadim Zhovtanyuk]

Hi Carlos,

There is no such exact recommendation about XR release, but taking into account the experience

I can say:

-4.1.2 is newest release from 4.1 train and of course there are some bug fixes plus some SMUs

-4.2.0 is quite new one and there is no SMU for this one yet, but we have support for new hardware and some new software features.

Also, 4.1 is widely deployed and 4.1.2 is used on diffeerent sites and I can say the 4.1.2 would be a good candidate.

wbr

/vadim