http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/relnotes/ol_1982.htm
Cisco Catalyst OS Image Upgrade Procedure
Based on the discussion above, the following procedure is recommended for performing a software upgrade with the minimal
downtime associated with the High Availability feature. High-availability compatibility between the images will be
determined in the middle of the procedure. The MSFC is affected by this procedure, but is discussed in the section "MSFC
High Availability Features."
In this example, the supervisor engine in slot 1 (Sup-A) will begin in active mode and the supervisor engine in slot 2 (Sup-B)
will begin in standby mode. It is recommended that a console connection be available for both supervisors for this procedure.
1. Disable the High Availability feature on the active supervisor engine.
Sup-A> (enable) set system highavailability disable
This feature is disabled by default.
2. Load the new Cisco Catalyst OS software image into the boot Flash of the active supervisor engine (via slot 0, Trivial File
Transfer Protocol [TFTP], etc.).
Sup-A> (enable) copy slot0:cat6000-sup2k8.7-2-2.bin bootflash:cat6000-sup2k8.7-2-2.bin
3. Verify that the new image was loaded successfully into the boot Flash of the active supervisor engine.
Sup-A> (enable) dir bootflash:
4. Clear the current boot variable.
Sup-A> (enable) clear boot system all
5. Set the boot variable on the active supervisor engine to the new Cisco Catalyst OS software image.
6. Sup-A> (enable) set boot system flash bootflash:cat6000-sup2k8.7-2-2.bin
In approximately 120 seconds, the image set as the boot entry on the active supervisor engine will be copied to the boot Flash
on the standby supervisor engine (this is the image synchronization). This is an internal TFTP of the Cisco Catalyst OS image
file and takes a few minutes to complete. The image file will have a BTSYNC appended to the beginning of the filename to
designate that it has been synchronized from the active supervisor engine's boot-time image.
7. After synchronization, verify that the new image is located on the standby supervisor engine and the boot variable is
properly set.
Sup-A> (enable) dir 2/bootflash:
Sup-A> (enable) show boot 2
The new Cisco Catalyst OS image is now on both supervisor engines.
8. Enable high-availability versioning on the active supervisor engine.
Sup-A> (enable) set system highavailability enable
Sup-A> (enable) set system highavailability versioning enable
You must enable versioning before the standby supervisor engine running the new software becomes active. This allows the
standby supervisor engine to reboot under the new version of Cisco Catalyst OS while remaining in standby mode.
9. It is the intent of these upgrade procedures to allow for a fallback plan of using the old Cisco Catalyst OS image. The
now-active supervisor engine must maintain that older image (even after an accidental reboot). Therefore, the boot
variable on the active supervisor engine must be changed to its original setting, which should still be stored in the boot
Flash.
Sup-A> (enable) set boot system flash bootflash:cat6000-sup2k8. old .bin
Note: Since versioning is enabled, the setting of the boot variable does not cause an image synchronization.
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