7th October 2011
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.6(2)
Nice little challenge if you’re upgrading any Cisco MCS7825H3 servers to CUCM 8.6(2) or indeed Unity Connection to the same release.
In a nutshell, the upgrade process converts the RAID on the server from hardware to software based and effectively results in a total reformat of the machine during the process. A few points about this:
- You need to attach an external USB storage drive with a minimum size of 16GB (CUCM) or 128 GB (CUC) to the physical server. During the upgrade the server will dump off its current config to the USB drive and then import it after the format is complete.
- The USB drive will be reformatted during the operation so beware!
- Obviously this means that remote upgrades will not be possible, and physical access to the machine will be required.
- Finally, as the server is formatted, you cannot switch back to the old version like you can on most other upgrades. The only way to revert the software is to reimage the entire server, and restore from DRS backup. Ouch!
A link the release notes is here which provides more details on the process.
Because of the RAID conversion, the process can take at least a couple of hours longer than previous upgrades.
Not as straight foward as other upgrades it is fair to say.
Barry Hesk
