Upgrading LTM HA Pair - disable network failover?

why do u need to upgrade to 9.4.8 before going to 10.2.1?

 

 

1b, if network failover is disabled, both unit will go active. i think u should disconnect all network connectivity.

 

sol11215: Upgrading an active/standby BIG-IP high availability pair

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/11000/200/sol11215.html

 

 

1f, image2disk --format=volumes BIGIP-10.2.1.297.0.iso

 

sol12561: Change in Behavior: The image2disk utility --instslot and --format options are now mutually exclusive

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/12000/500/sol12561.html

 

 

there are some change behavior in v10.x. these are what u should take note.

 

sol9947: Change in Behavior: The Peer Management Address setting is required for BIG-IP version 10.x systems configured for network failover

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/9000/900/sol9947.html

 

 

sol10655: Change in Behavior: CR/LF characters appended to the HTTP monitor Send string

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/10000/600/sol10655.html

 

 

finally, if there is any issue in loading config after upgrading, try b load and it should show what is wrong.

 

 

hth

9.4.8 is the support recommended path to 10.x:

 

"The upgrade path for LTM, in order to correctly roll forward your config, is ; go to version 9.4.8, confirm config is good, then do a v10 upgrade."

 

 

thanks for the link - I can't believe the "search F5" field does not seem to access those knowledgebase articles!

 

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/11000/200/sol11215.html?sr=15041414network_failover_mgmt says:

 

Temporarily set the Redundancy State Preference setting of both units to None. This action ensures that the BIG-IP systems will not swap roles unnecessarily during the procedure.

 

 

The doc goes on to say disconnect the unit you are upgrading from the networks except for mgmt (for heartbeats)

 

If the new & old High availability protocols are compatible then you are in luck otherwise you need downtime to complete the upgrade of the pair.

 

 

So is there non-disruptive path from my current 9.3.1 to latest 10.2.1 without downtime? (are the High availability protocols compatible?)

 

 

thanks

i don't think network failover protocol is compatible even port is identical. i mean it would have some downtime.

 

 

sol9057: Service port and protocol used for BIG-IP network failover

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/9000/000/sol9057.html

I'm agreed with nitass re network failover protocols - even if the two versions use the same protocol / port i would play safe and not bank on them working together as you'd hope. Doesn't one of the referenced docs give this warning / advice? I think it does. Anyway, for a non-downtime scenario I used serial failover, rather than network failover. Then the Active would remain Active whilst you upgrade / reboot the Standby. It made my life a lot easier when I upgraded my HA environment. If I remember correctly I purchased one from f5 - and not expensive at all.

 

 

Re Redundancy State Preference - I'd always have this set as None. I inherited them configured with a preference but this only caused unnecessary failovers so changed it to None. For example, an Active reboots for some reason, Standby now becomes Active. However, once the original Active LTM is back online it then is made Active again. Just my two pence here.

 

 

N