GTM/LTM upgrade process without any downtime

Hi Guys,

 

I am planning to upgrade our BIG-IP LTM and GTM, they all are vCMP guests.I have outlined the steps that I am going to follow to do the upgrades so please could someone point it out if this is incorrect.

 

All my F5’s are on version 12.1.2

 

I am upgrading our F5 environment in two steps.

 

Step 1 : upgrade all the F5 LTM from 12.1.2 to 12.1.3.4. After the upgrade LTMs would have latest version of big3d. I believe GTMs would have no problem with this as their big3d version can be same or older than LTMs big3d.

 

After one week perform GTM upgrades

 

Step 2 : My GTMs are in SYNC group, so before the upgrade I will break the sync group and upgrade GTMs code from 12.1.2 to 12.1.3.4. My GTMs are in pairs i.e. 2 pairs in one dc and 2 in another dc.

 

After all four GTMs are upgraded to same version then put them back to the same SYNC group. I don’t need to run big3d install from GTM to LTMs as they are on the same version.

 

After this all my LTMs and GTMs will be on the same version which is 12.1.3.4.

 

I will also upgrade the vCMP host to the same version, they don't have to be but I like the consistency all across.

 

I am hoping I am doing it right but please can someone correct me If my approach is wrong.

 

Thanks, Pankaj