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netsecurity_666's avatar
netsecurity_666
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Apr 17, 2014
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Traffic group between minor 11.x versions

I'm going to try an upgrade from 11.2 to 11.5 on a couple of BIG-IP 6900 in active/standby.

 

Does anyone know if the traffic group would keep working between the two different version?

 

In this way one could upgrade the standby version and, once done, force to standby and upgrade the other one.

 

Thanks

 

application delivery
availability
deployment
LTM
  • Cory_50405's avatar
    Cory_50405
    Apr 17, 2014

    Correct. I'll be upgrading our production LTMs next week in almost the same fashion, except we're going from v11.2.0 to v11.4.1. We also have 6900s in an active/standby pair.

     

    Every time we've upgraded our LTMs in the past (10.2.1 to 10.2.3, 10.2.3 to 10.2.4, 10.2.4 to 11.1.0, 11.1.0 to 11.2.0), we've done it in this fashion. Never had an issue.

     

    Ensure your configurations are synchronized between the two units before you start and you should be fine. Oh, and be sure to re-license both units before initiating the new code installations so you don't encounter licensing issues after booting into v11.5.

     

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  • Cory_50405's avatar
    Cory_50405
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    Apr 17, 2014

    Yep, this approach will work. This is what we normally do for our LTM active/standby pairs.

     

  • Netsecurity_109's avatar
    Netsecurity_109
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    Apr 17, 2014

    Hi Cory,

     

    you know, we will perform the above upgrade on a production network, That's why I wanna make sure I understood you fully.

     

    1. We have two big-ip 6900 in active/standby, both devices are equipped with sw 11.2.
    2. We will upgrade the standby one to 11.5
    3. We will force the failover so that the 11.5 will take over as active.
    4. We will upgrade the remaining device, now in standby, to 11.5.

    Would that work? without split-brain scenario?

     

    Thanks again

     

  • Cory_50405's avatar
    Cory_50405
    Icon for Noctilucent rankNoctilucent
    Apr 17, 2014

    Correct. I'll be upgrading our production LTMs next week in almost the same fashion, except we're going from v11.2.0 to v11.4.1. We also have 6900s in an active/standby pair.

     

    Every time we've upgraded our LTMs in the past (10.2.1 to 10.2.3, 10.2.3 to 10.2.4, 10.2.4 to 11.1.0, 11.1.0 to 11.2.0), we've done it in this fashion. Never had an issue.

     

    Ensure your configurations are synchronized between the two units before you start and you should be fine. Oh, and be sure to re-license both units before initiating the new code installations so you don't encounter licensing issues after booting into v11.5.

     

    • netsecurity_666's avatar
      netsecurity_666
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      Apr 18, 2014
      Hi Cory, just a little follow up to let you know that the upgrade procedure worked fine. It may be useful to share that when working with 2 different versions (minor) while the traffic-group kept working flawless the sync db went in disconnected state (as expected). So during the upgrade procedure a slightly intimidating black "disconnected" message appear on the right top of the screen instead of the familiar "Sync" or "Changes Pending". Don't worry this will diasappear as soon as both boxes are upgraded to the same version, and have no impact on the active/standby switchover. Thank you again for you valuable input.
    • Cory_50405's avatar
      Cory_50405
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      Apr 18, 2014
      Indeed, they won't sync up until they are on the same code. Glad to hear your migration went smoothly. Hope mine does next week.