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Joseph_Johnson_'s avatar
Joseph_Johnson_
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 30, 2018

F5 cutover from passive to active after upgrade

Hi,

 

We have two F5 devices in sync that we are in the process of upgrading. I understand that when I upgrade the first device they will become out of sync since they will be on different software versions. My question is why even though the passive device says Online (standby) does it still try and take traffic. This caused an outage and we still have more devices to upgrade. Should i leave the interfaces disabled and the device forced offline until I get both devices upgraded and back in sync. Thanks for your input.

 

  • Just recently did a few upgrades virtual and physical did not experiences any issues with out of sync device with new software, I placed the devices in a forced offline state just for safety before proceeding with upgrade. Did you test your load balancing when you switch the active to standby before you proceeded with upgrading ? It is not impossible for underlay network configuration not being duplicated at the passive appliance

     

    • Joseph_Johnson_'s avatar
      Joseph_Johnson_
      Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus

      I did the upgrade and left the device in standby because when we tried to cut over, the ports on the switch had been turned off and I was not aware. When we had the network admin turn the ports back active, the interfaces came up and the device tried to take traffic even though it was in standby. I am assuming since they aren't actually in sync,(different software versions), then being in Online Stand by is not stopping the device from trying to receive traffic. Next time i will just leave the device in forced offline mode until we want to switch over.

       

  • Best practice is keep devbice in forced offline status while ugprading, so that other device will take the traffic and you will not face active-active issues.