Aruba Virtual Switching Extension (VSX) is a virtualisation technology for aggregation/core switches such as the Aruba 6400, 8300 and 8400 series hardware, which run the Aruba CX operating system. VSX allows a pair of switches with a dual control plane to present as one virtualised switch, providing High Availability solution.
A VSX pair can be upgraded with no interruption to network traffic, all with one command. Once the upgrade is initiated, traffic is drained from the VSX secondary peer, upgrades and reboots the secondary peer, once the switch is up and active again, the VSX primary peer is upgraded and reboots.
Upgrade Procedure
There are 2 options to upgrade a VSX pair, download the image via a TFTP URL or boot from a pre-staged image uploaded to either the primary or secondary partition. This post covers upgrading a VSX pair using a pre-uploaded image.
- Login to the Web UI of the VSX Primary switch and navigate to System > Firmware update
- Click Browse to select the software image downloaded from the Aruba website
- Select which partition to upload the image to Primary or Secondary, click Upload
- Repeat the same process on the VSX Secondary peer, upload the same image version to the same partition as on the Primary switch.
- Login to the CLI of the VSX Primary and Secondary peer
- Run show image to confirm the new image is uploaded to the secondary partition
CORE1# show image --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ArubaOS-CX Primary Image --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version : LL.10.09.1010 Size : 572 MB Date : 2022-03-10 23:07:42 UTC SHA-256 : 0d1f269211262c4ef3e2c4596e8ef8d59f59e69c2070d92f1ee721b47f327f01 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ArubaOS-CX Secondary Image --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version : LL.10.10.1010 Size : 576 MB Date : 2022-09-21 17:19:31 UTC SHA-256 : 9a23ca1d545dccdaf5293bb4750e4a1e3230066ee98443b0c5bb069de1873b80 Default Image : primary
- On the VSX Primary switch, run the command vsx update-software boot-bank secondary this will initiate the upgrade on both switches, rebooting to the image on the secondary partition.
CORE1# vsx update-software
REMOTE_URL URL of syntax {tftp://{IP|HOST}[:PORT][;blocksize=VAL]/FILE
boot-bank Specify the boot-bank where image is pre-staged
CORE1# vsx update-software boot-bank secondary This command will upgrade both VSX primary and secondary systems, using pre-staged image, from 'LL.10.09.1010' to 'LL.10.10.1010' installed in secondary bank on both devices, then reboot them in sequence. The VSX secondary will reboot first, followed by primary. Continue (y/n)?
Once the upgrade has been initiated on VSX Primary, the VSX Secondary switch should be rebooted, with the message below.
CORE2# Nov 8 09:59:35 hpe-mgmtmd[1684715]: RebootLibPh1: Reboot reason: VSX software update
On the VSX Primary switch, the CLI output should be updated at each stage.
Once the VSX Secondary switch is up, then the Primary switch will be reboot.
Once the VSX Primary switch has rebooted, log back into the CLI and run the command show vsx status. Confirm the Config sync status is In-Sync
CORE1(config)# show vsx status VSX Operational State --------------------- ISL channel : In-Sync ISL mgmt channel : operational Config Sync Status : In-Sync NAE : peer_reachable HTTPS Server : peer_reachable Attribute Local Peer ------------ -------- -------- ISL link lag256 lag256 ISL version 2 2 System MAC 02:01:00:00:01:01 02:01:00:00:01:01 Platform 8360 8360 Software Version LL.10.10.1010 LL.10.10.1010 Device Role primary secondary
Summary
Throughout the upgrade process of the VSX pair and assuming the connected downstream/upstream switches are dual homed to both VSX switches, there should be no network disruption. Though as always in networking, plan for the worst and perform the upgrade in a change window. Ensure you backup your configuration.