MAJOR MAINTENANCE PROCESS

What to do when you are planning a major change in your network

Case Details:

Customer contact information:

Maintenance window day, time, duration and time zone:

Reason for maintenance window:

SERIAL # of all units involved:

Unit function: (Production or test lab)

Remote Access (if possible):

Remote Access IP addresses and Log In information:

So you should have all of that info handy before attempting this, it is for your best benefit as it will assure that you get quick assistance should I lead you astray. I also highly recommend if not require that you have serial/console access to the unit. You can setup a syslog server to watch the progress but this gives you little control if you are remote. A console session insures your install does not turn into a failure. I took several screen shots along the way of my upgrade so you would know that you are on the right path, basically this is all done via command-line with my method and should take about 45 minutes if done with little pause or breaks.

After opening the proactive case you should acquire the code base we will need for the interim upgrade. This is available on F5’s website and you’ll want to get the local install package would should be a large “.im” file. There are several changes when going from the 9.1 branch to the 9.4 branch and the most important/required one is the addition of the “Service check date:” in the /config/bigip.license file. When the upgrade package checks to see if the unit is under a valid support contract, the 9.4.x installer will error out when looking at a 9.3.1 or older config file.

Installer Boot Image Configuration Screen Fig1.1

What I have found to work best is to leave the current running version on its own partition, in this case it is on HD1.2.  I run the installer program (#im local-install-9.3.1.37.1.im) and go into the boot image configuration screen shown in Fig1.1  I select HD1.1 and CF1.1 for “discard” so that it will purge whatever is on them now and have them fresh and ready to go. I’ve had better luck with this than choosing to install over them because then the installer will look on that partition for the bigip.license file. With the partition clear, it is much easier to proceed. Selecting both of these will give you a summary screen saying are you sure? Well, are you? If so, hit yes and t will reboot and go into a installer mode where it simply clears those partitions, then reboot back to the HD1.2 which is what we want in this case, that’s the operational instance.

Discard Summary Fig1.2

To the right (fig1.2) is the discard summary screen I mentioned, you’ll want to see this before you let it clear them.

Now we are ready to do the actual install. First and foremost, go into the GUI and goto the license section and re-activate your license. If this fails, you cannot proceed. For some it is easier to do via command line, use the get_dossier method and use license.f5.com to get your license file. Once this is done, run the command again (#im /var/tmp/local-install-9.3.1.37.1.im) to kick off the 9.3.1 install. Select CF1.1 as the install target because this is purely a temporary upgrade that we want to get to.

9.3.1 Install Summary Fig1.3

Fig 1.3 has the summary you should see before you continue. Make SURE that it is on CF1.1 before you proceed. This will reboot the box and take approximately 15 mins to install, upon which point it will by default come to the new 9.3.1 version.

Now I bet at this point you know what is next? Go ahead and install the 9.4.x code right? Nope! We still do not have the updated license check date: field because we haven’t activated this license on the 9.3.x code base. That’s the next step, go into the GUI and do it or use command line, but make sure you update/reactivate the license before you proceed.

9.4.6 Install Summary Fig1.4

Once you are sure this has been done, go ahead and run the command (#im local-install-9.4.6.401.0.im) and let’s do the 9.4.x code install. We want to select the open partition  as the final destination. HD1.1 will be selected as shown in Fig1.4 . Once again, this will trigger a reboot with an install. After this process is over you should see a few additional steps that did not occur in the 9.3.x install but this is normal. Congrats, if you see the screen in the picture below (fig1.5) you have succesfully migrated to 9.4.x. I always recommend reactivating your license because it helps make sure everything is current, I would also verify/test failover and be sure to run a “switchboot” and verify this is the default boot partition (hd1.2 in this example)

Fig1.5 Install complete

(I realize 9.4.7 is out at the time of this writing, but 9.4.6 is the tested standard for this environment)