R7 to R9.1 SD Recreate Card Question

[cg11]

Simple question.

I have upgraded and downgraded 100s of Ip400s and am newer to the Ip500v2 units. Used DTS dozens of times too.

For all you upgrade gurus....

System is IP500v2 R7.0

Want to upgrade to R9.1 and already purchased and installed R9.1 license prior to upgrade.

I read TT 276 and am familiar with upgrading to 8.1.65 (or R9.0) then to 9.1.x.

At what point in the upgrade should I recreate the SD card so that it contains the final 9.1 systems files?

Do I need to re-create the SD card (or copy the system files) at each step in the upgrade process?

I notice there is a check box when upgrading that says "Update System Files".

Just want to be 100% sure on this one and not waste time copying the R8.1 files to SD card if not necessary.

 

[intrigrant]

Eight steps:
1 - Recreate the SD card to 9.1 with web components
2 - On the SD card rename the ip500v2.bin file in the System\Primary folder
3 - copy a 9.0 ip500v2.bin file to the SD card System\Primary folder
4 - boot up the IP Office with the SD Card and wait untill it is done
5 - take out SD Card and delete the ip500v2.bin file and rename the original ip500v2.bin file back to ip500v2,bin
6 - put hte card back in IP Office and reboot
7 - when done erase the security settings with a serial cable
8 - upgrade complete

 

[cg11]

intrigrant, thanks.....

Thanks for the shortcut. Question does this upgrade the 2 Dig30s? Sounds like I will have to go back and post R9.1 upgrade completion and run upgrade tool to upgrade my Dig30v2s, correct?

 

[cg11]

intrigrant,

one more question...

Why do I have to erase/default the security setting (step 7)?

 

[janni78]

Just make sure you get the Essential Edition license when you upgrade the first step unless you bought a new one.

"Trying is the first step to failure..." - Homer

 

[intrigrant]

Because during the upgrade the security settings get corrupted and there is a big change you can't open a config due to that corruption.
I do a lot of upgrades and nine out of ten needs a security reset, so I made it a standard in my upgrade procedure.
It is not a big task and it can save some time.

 

[cg11]

Thanks guys.

One more thing, this unit is a cold standby. Do we REALLY need the Essential Edition License?

The only time we will use this IP500 is when/if the main/active IP500 (R9.1) fails and we will move the current R9.1 SD card from the active Ip500 to this cold standby Ip500.

 

[janni78]

In that case you have all the licenses on the SD card your moving over.

"Trying is the first step to failure..." - Homer

 

[cg11]

Yes janni78, we have 20+ lieneses on the active IP500 including Essential Edition and the R9.1 Upgrade License.

I have read conflicting information on whether Essential Edition is required "solely" for upgrade purposes only.

 

[cg11]

Update, When going from R7 to R8 (or R9.0) a virtual Essential Edition license is created. So, for our purposes this is fine and Essential Edition does not have to be purchased.

 

[janni78]

Since you're using it as cold standby you don't need any licenses for the system, not even the upgrade license.

"Trying is the first step to failure..." - Homer

 

[intrigrant]

Only once you made a call on any version the unit is locked to that version and if you want to use a higher version you need a upgrade license even though the SD comes from a licensed (higher) version. A full essential license will not be enough.

 

[cg11]

janni78,

thanks for input, agreed, an upgrade license should not be needed here.

Per TSB185 and TT276 it says it is "recommended" to install Upgrade License prior upgrading to R9.1 and upgrade license if you are PCS14 or below (we are at PCS10).

I followed TSB185 & TT276 for two reasons:
a) to avoid any lockups/corruption
b) both active and standby IP500s are legally at 9.1 in the event of failure. There still remains a single point of failure: "the active R9.1 SD card" that contains 20+ licenses. Now, if active Ip500 and it's SD card is bad, customer has an SD card (and IP500) at R9.1 and can run with minimal communications until licenses are transferred to the backup SD card (which can take a day or two).

Customer is almost a 7x24 operation with 130+ stations. Location is Florida where lightning hits are very common during summer months and one hit can take out an entire IP500 stack. The standby IP50 stack has nothing connected to them (not even power) for this reason (prevent lightning strike from taking down voice communication totally.

 

[intrigrant]

I have seen many evironmental outages of IP Office 500 from lightning to flooding and fire and only once the SD card had become unusable, that was with the fire,
Only a small burned piece of plastic remained in the IP 500 chassis. In all other cases the SD card was in good condition.

 

[cg11]

Wow, very good "real life" production system feedback....nice to hear. Thank you intrigrant. I offered/presented customer to add a minimal amount of SIP trunks and IP endpoints licenses (and Essential Edition) to standby IP500 just for good measure. They have mostly digital stations in their call center, so with minimal spending they can have more recovery options in the event of total failure on active IP500.

I guess the question becomes, how long will it take Avaya to transfer 20+ licenses to a different SD card during a support call? (if they can even do it). My experience with support is that they do not have any license control for IP Office. You have to go through distributor per Avaya tech support.

 

[intrigrant]

To my best knowledge it is the distributor who will do the license swap and not Avaya. So it is upto your distri wether they can help you and your customer within a reasonable time.
I have done the licensing stuff myself for a while with ADI and swapping licenses is just a few minutes work, most of the time is lost filling in forms to place the order.

 

[derfloh]

From my experience license swap takes not more time as it needs to drive to the customer to replace the card. Even if the customer is not far away.

We have one customer - really - far away who has a second chassis with all cards and a second SD card. I upgraded the system to 9.1 when I prepared it and nothing more. So in case anything goes bad he just needs to power on the new IPO with the old card. If the card is broken we can swap the licenses very fast.

Luckily the system is on PCS17 or newer so that I don't have to think about upgrade steps in between and missing virtual licenses.