Since the Flex Fabric switches are a little bit of an unloved child I provide some more information on their maintenance. Todays Version i 7.10. in the release 2432 Patch 06, meaning that it only added one patchlevel in the last year.

And allthough I plan on retiring my switches, I want to do one last firmware update and with that share how to do it:

First if all do housekeeping. Since flash memory for filesystem access, which you will need for the upgrade procedure, is rare, please delete all unneeded previous versions. Otherwise you won’t have fun.

In the operations pane you may check with filesystem commands

dir

Likewise refer to the devices in your IRF cluster e.g..

dir slot2#flash:/

This should provide you with a detailed listing of the current flash content. Be aware that this is not automatically synchronized in every IRF-cluster node and needs to be done for every single chassis. In this case you then may delete previous versions like:


delete 5700-cmw710-boot-r2432p03.bin
delete 5700-cmw710-system-r2432p03.bin
delete slot2#flash:/5700-cmw710-boot-r2432p03.bin
delete slot2#flash:/5700-cmw710-system-r2432p03.bin


And in case you still dont see free space or get errors

reset recycle-bin


Usually you don’t need the upgrade files after the procedure but I tend to keep the last and the previous one. After that copy from TFTP/FTP/USB the new binaries to the switch. The firmware package contains an .ipe and a .bin file, which both are needed.

copy tftp://192.168.120.158/5700-CMW710-R2432P06.ipe .

Follow up is the update procedure per bootloader command per slot:


boot-loader file flash:/5700-CMW710-R2432P06.ipe slot 1 main
boot-loader file flash:/5700-CMW710-R2432P06.ipe slot 2 main
boot-loader file flash:/5700-CMW710-R2432P06.ipe slot 3 main


And don’t do the error to accept the delete after the first upgrade. The system offers you cleanup but do this only after the last slot to be upgraded.

After the upgrade procedure double check that the proper firmware images are written in the flashes of all IRF stack members.

display boot-loader

Do all images fit the apropriate entries, you should reload the stack and boot.

reboot

After the final reboot log into the IRF-stack and check the running versions with:

display version

In case everything went all right you now should run on the latest software version.

KyP. F.