Well, at some point in our management of the SD-WAN infrastructure,
we're going to have to perform a software upgrade.
And the good news is that we can do the software upgrade from our
manager and we can push code out to all of the different devices.
So keep in mind, we're going to need to upgrade manager itself.
It is running a version of code that needs to be upgraded, but from there,
we can push code out, for example, to the validator or the V-Bond.
And yes, depending on the size of our environment,
we might have multiple validators.
We can also send it out to one controller or potentially multiple
controllers. And hopefully in our SD-WAN, we have many edges.
If we have a single edge, I don't know why we deployed SD-WAN.
So what we're going to want to do is we, as the admins,
we're going to have to go out and we're going to have to acquire
software from Cisco.
So we're going to go to cisco.com and download the software for our
SD-WAN environment. From here,
we're going to need to upload that code to manager or
possibly another alternative is to upload it to a remote server,
which will then push it to manager.
And we'll see that here coming up as well. So we have options.
We can do a remote server or we can upload straight into manager.
Once manager has the code stored in its repository,
at that point we can upgrade manager itself,
or we can push the code out depending on what it is we want to upgrade.
Now, importantly,
there is an order of operations that Cisco wants us to go through.
And I actually wrote it out in the order that we're going to prefer.
So we're going to start with manager. As we can imagine,
if we're pushing new code out,
we probably want manager to already be running that code.
So we're going to start with manager and then we're going to push it to the
validators. And then we're going to go to the controllers.
And then we're going to go to the edges.
So it looks a little bit like the word mace, I guess,
that medieval weapon you can hold up.
It's got iron ball with spikes on it. I don't know.
I'm just trying to think of something that helps us remember the order. Yeah,
the A is upside down there. It's actually a V for validator,
but it is what it is.
So whatever helps us to remember the order of operation is going to be important
because we're going to absolutely want to make sure we know that when we're
So let's go out to software.cisco.com or we can just go to Cisco and find
Cisco software central here at the site.
But this URL is software.cisco.com.
And what we want to do is we want to download and upgrades.
We want to access our downloads here.
We're going to come out and do a search.
So I'm going to just search for SD-WAN. We should see this come up.
I'm going to click SD-WAN right here. And then we've got some options.
So first of all, we see vManage software.
I can click this and come in here and download my vManage.
If I have the rights to the software, I would just download it right here.
And then I also, whoops, coming back here. So if I step back,
we can also click this SD-WAN software update.
And we're going to find that this includes software for vSmart and vBond.
Lastly, we might say, well, what about the edges? Well, when I look at this,
I don't see edges. I do see vEdge in here,
but the vEdges themselves are no longer part of Cisco supported products.
And so we're going to actually access iOS XE for that.
So let's say that I'm doing that. I could come back here, maybe to routers,
but either way I can type in 8000v, look at the edge software.
And I'm always looking for that keyword edge. It's really what I'm looking for.
So I might think, oh, SD-WAN software. Well, no, I'm going to,
because if we look at this, it's really just an optimization service.
But if I look at iOS XE software and I do see that keyword edge here.
So this is what we're kind of looking for when we're downloading the different
versions of code. So coming back to our chalkboard for a minute,
when we're looking at the images, we'll notice that first of all,
we had an image for manager.
It was its own image and unlike iOS XE devices,
this is going to be a tar.gz or possibly what we might call a
TGZ type of file. From here,
we have a separate image that works for the validator and for the
controller. This is also a tar.gz.
There we go. And lastly, we have the edge,
the edge is again, running iOS XE,
and this is running a .bin file.
So just like with our traditional iOS XE deployments,
we're going to use a .bin file to deploy to the edge.
So these types of images are what we're going to download. Again,
a key factor here is recognizing that the validator and the controller are
downloading, or we're going to upload to them the same software package,
whereas manager is running its own independent software package.
So let's pop into SD-WAN manager and see how we go about doing this.
So first of all, we might just want to know what version we're running.
I can click up here and I can go to about,
and I can see what version of code we're running. I'm running 20.15.1.
Now this format right here is then the format of Viptela software.
Manager runs a flavor of Viptela, the vSmart and the controller,
or the vSmart is the controller, but the controller and the validator,
they run a version of Viptela software as well. And we'll see that coming up.
Whereas iOS XE is going to look a little different. From here,
I might want to grab backup configurations before I do a upgrade,
which might, you never know if it's going to cause problems.
So you go to configuration, we go to devices down here,
look at control components, for example, and then, you know, the validator,
let's say I'm going to upgrade that.
I could come over here and look at the running configuration and copy this out
of here.
So it's just a little bit of best practice to make sure that we've got that in
case we have to rebuild from scratch because the software upgrade didn't work
for some reason.
So next we're going to have to upload our images to the manager server.
This is where I'm going to use the maintenance tab down here.
And we see a couple of things.
We see the software repository and software upgrade.
I can't upgrade software unless I've uploaded software.
And so that's what the software repository is all about. Now here,
this is where I could transfer my software image or software images via a
remote server. I could fire up a server. What type of server is it? FTP? Well,
when we click add remote server,
we see the FTP is an option as well as HTTP and SCP.
So as long as my server is serving up files using these,
I can enter in the server name and the IP address and the port and the
credentials in order to go extract or pull up the images into manager.
Otherwise I can just click software images here. I can click add new software.
So once the server is configured,
I could pull software and using the remote server or I could just say manager.
And at this point I can drag the software into this area.
I'm not sure why that closed there, but right here. Okay. It keeps closing.
That's fine. It doesn't want to stay up for some reason.
So that is how we would upload a software image to manager.
And then we would see the software listed down here.
Now,
because this is a lab environment and CML doesn't give us access to new versions
of code, unfortunately from Cisco, we're not able to actually upload anything.
However, if you do have your own SD-WAN environment in a production world,
you've purchased it from Cisco, you have smart net on it.
You can go out and download this and practice it in an isolated lab environment.
And it was a good idea to do it. But if you don't have that,
you just have CML. Again, we can't really practice this in CML very easily.
And so it's just a matter of understanding what that process looks like.
So the next step here is to go over back to maintenance.
And once we've uploaded the software, go to software upgrade from here.
We, again, we can see our edges with the icons there that are a little bit more
legacy at this point, control components, same thing.
I can see my controller and validator here. And of course,
manager is listed separately because it runs its own software,
but we do see over here with the current version that again,
that 12.15.1 is there under control components.
I also see the same current version. That's again,
Viptela software format. If I look at my WAN edges,
I see a completely different format here.
And that's because this is running iOS XE.
So it's not a concern that I'm running version 17 on the edges when I'm running
version 20 here, because they're completely different sets of software.
So going in the order that we said, we would start with manager here,
and we'd use the software image actions. And we'd go down this list,
not with delete necessarily, but we'd go down this list in order.
I'd want to upgrade the code and push the code down.
I'd want to activate the code, which will require a reload of the manager.
And yes, I will get kicked out of manager while I'm doing that.
So always keep in mind, remember our manager and our validator and our controller,
they are not required to keep everything, uh, keep data flowing. All right.
We do need it in order to update control plane information over time and all
that. But if I reset these devices,
data will still flow through the SD-WAN edges and we just want to make sure that
they come back online quickly in case there are changes.
Because if there are changes while the controller is not up,
then the edges will never know about those changes.
But it's a very important part of this.
We still want to do it during a maintenance window,
but at the same time we don't need to worry too much,
especially in management,
especially in upgrading manager, we lose access to manager,
but we don't cut off the traffic that's flowing through our SD-WAN.
So again, the steps here are to go to upgrade, then activate,
then we can set the default version if we so desire.
In most cases, that's what we'd want to do.
However, we might wait and make sure after a day or so that the software is
stable before we go in and set that default version,
which will impact the version that loads if it ends up getting reloaded.
Now, after the manager is up,
I'd go to the control components.
And remember, we're starting with the validator and then controller.
Now I can select multiple devices here.
Unlike manager, there's no check mark there,
but I could check multiples here.
And again, I would want to do this one at a time, right?
Do validator first, and then the controller, as we said.
But again, the process is the same.
Upgrade, activate, set default version if desired.
And then lastly, we can perform maintenance.
There we go.
We can perform some way on edges.
Upgrade, so I could upgrade a couple at a time, baby.
And again, upgrade, activate, set default version.
So that is how we perform our upgrades.
It is something that might be non-disruptive because of the nature of,
as we've talked about before,
we're keeping our data plane online as much as possible.
However, still something we want to do during a maintenance window.
And it's important for us to understand the upgrade order,
as well as how we get our images moved around and uploaded to SD-WAN manager.