Forum Discussion
Fernando_Carran
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusIs it posible upgrade version 10.2.1 to 11.6 in two sessions (active-standby system)?
The best practice of F5 is upgrade the system active-standby in one session (Upgrading BIG-IP Active-Standby System to Version 11.x).
Initial conditions Unit 1 10.2.1 and Unit 2 10.2.1
But....
I believe you should be fine, as far as the protocol/service ports used for the Network Failover match (your case) it should work: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/9000/000/sol9057.html
After upgrading Device B it will create a traffic-group in standby mode, you should then be able to force Device A to standby and leave the cluster running with Device B 11.x as active, https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/tmos-active-standby-upgrade-11-1-0/1.html
Honestly, I see no point in doing that as the Fallback process is sooo easy, if something goes wrong with 11.x just change the boot location back to 10.x volume.
David_Larsen
Employee
EmployeeThere are a couple issues that will have to be focused on, but in theory it would work.
1. HA is very different in 11 vs 10.2.1. Because of this after you upgrade the standby and it boots up the HA will no longer work and both devices will go Active. This means both will ARP out the IP addresses for all your VIPs and NATs. One way to handle this is to disable ARP on all your virtual addresses and NAT addresses on the standby, then upgrade it and make sure everything looks good. Then disable ARP on your 10.2.1 Active box and enable ARP on the 11.6 box.
2. A better way to approach this may be to upgrade both on a new volume, then if you have to failback just failback to the volume with 10.2.1. It may be faster than the time it would take to disable ARP and re-enable ARP on the other side.
Good luck with the upgrade