You can physically leave all the cards in the chassis. There may be a need to power cycle the chassis if you run into problems. Good Luck.

Thanks to you for providing such a useful information regarding Nortel, i have my question tomorrow night i have one activity in which i am going to upgrade 6 ERS fro 4.1.6.3 to 5.1.2.0 and i have all the steps with me but only one thing i want to ask should i pull out the R modules out before upgrade or should they stay there in chassis ?

Regards
Asad Mukhtar

Regards
Asad Mukhtar

according to Avaya pre-E won’t work with 5 and E modules won’t work with 7. At a practical level I believe you that pre-E work with 5: I have no experience; I replaced them before going to 5 just to be on the safe side. Milko says that the modules are not comming up in his setup, so I was just suggesting not to invest to much time in a configuration that may be -in some way- unsupported.

Ciao

Alberto

I believe they will work (I have them in a chassis with 5.1.2 software), but they are unsupported. In soft ware release 7.0 they won’t initialize at all since the code has been removed from the software in that release.

Cheers!

Hi Milko,

Yes you are correct… only the base license will be available past the 60 day trial license. You need to purchase an Advanced or Premium License if you want/need those features.

There was a ‘grandfather’ program where all ERS 8600 switches purchased before a certain date could get an Advanced License for no additional cost from Nortel. You can read more about that in this blog post.

Cheers!

I have recently upgraded a non-production mixed module (pre-E, E and RS) populated 8600 chassis from v4.1.0.0 to v5.1.1.1as my 8648GTRS modules were not being recognised. All have now come online apart from a pre-E module which I’ll look into further. I’m curious about the repeated message below from the output of your upgrade. I am seeing the same message displayed in my output. Does this mean only the base license (BA) features will be available after the trial period (60 days) expires?

License File does not exist
License File does not exist
License File does not exist
CPU6 [12/10/09 21:18:23] SW INFO Trial Period will expire in 60 days

BTW we are using VRRP.

Regards

Ryan

You’ll be the very first person I’ve heard of running 5.1.1.1 software that has reported such a problem. The issue you are reporting was very prevalent starting with 4.1.6.3 and wasn’t resolved until 4.1.8.3 was released.

Are you using VRRP or RSMLT?

I’m assuming that you have IP interfaces from each switch in each VLAN and you have OSPF enable (passive mode) for every interface?

Increasing the FDB aging timer is a good general idea, if nothing else it will keep the switch from expiring the ARP entry every 300 seconds which only creates a lot of broadcast traffic as the switches ARP for every IP address after they all expire.

I would also suggest we move this discussion to the forums where multiple folks can offer help and suggestions.

Good Luck!

Thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately, we are experiencing issues, as some ips (172.16.x.x) are not reachable from other subnets, while other ips in the same 172.16.0.0 range are reachable. I have one specific IP, which is present one arp table of one 8600, while not present in the arp table of the other. While IPs physically connected to the same switch as the IP in question are reachable.

A bit confusing to say the least. Any ideas would be appreciated. I did have one suggestion about changing the FDB aging from 300 seconds to 21601. But not certain about that.

Regards

Ryan

Hi Ryan,

They might not match 100% based up which switch is routing for all the different devices and VLANs. I have a site where switch A has an ARP table with 2899 entries and switch B has an ARP table with 2379 entries. The MAC/FDB table should be much closer though. In that same site switch A has a FDB table with 3749 entries while switch B has a FDB table with 3760 entries.

Unless you’re having issues you can safely ignore the differences.

Cheers!

We recently upgraded our two IST connected passports to 5.1.1.1, but it might not be a result of the upgrade, but I am finding the arp tables in are not same if I compare the boxes, and that some IPs are not available from some subnets, but available from others. I presume that depends on which 8600 they are routing via. Any ideas, we didn’t have this issue prior to the upgrade, and would like to take it out of the equation.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hi Michael,

I know about the new license model and I took advantage of the grandfather program. I just saw in the boot log that your system didn’t find any powerfull license and I was a little biut scared. But everything seems fine.

Ciao ciao

Hi svl0r,

Why don’t you write it up and I’ll post it as a guest post?

Cheers!

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the kind words… I’m happy that you find the information useful.

I can’t offer a lot other than to say that some Nortel customers that I’ve spoken with have had a lot of issues with 5.1.1.1 when run on switches with RS blades. Those customers have been very happy running 5.0.5 software and plan to adopt 5.0.5 going forward.

With that said I’ve learned that Nortel plans to release 5.1.1.2 (or 5.1.2) in the very near future that will address a few of the remaining issues identified in the 5.1.1.x software stream.

I would advise you to proceed with caution if you choose to run 5.1.1.1 software on any switch with RS blades. I fully expect Nortel to fix any issues, unfortunately I believe they are still trying to get their hands around the issue.

I’ve loaded 5.1.1.1 on two sets of ERS8600 clusters to date and have been very pleased with the outcome. I’m only using 8648GTR, 8683XLR and 8639GBR blades on these switches – no RS blades. I’m now counting the days hoping that the stability issues have been addressed.

Cheers!

Nortel has changed the licensed ‘features’ slightly since they originally announced the basic, advanced and premium licenses for the Ethernet Routing Switch 8600. You can read my post titled ERS 8600 Advanced License – Grandfather Chassis where you can see the graphic I copied straight from Nortel.

Nortel has since released the following graphic;

You can find additional licensing information in the Nortel Converged Data Networks Licensing Guide.

Cheers!

Cheers!

I hope had help

I wonder how easy it would be to perform this in a HA environment.

thanks for the lot of informations about Nortel Passports. I think the best community site for Nortel Equipment. Great work.

Regarding to this post we’re running currently 5 passports with 5.1.1.1 and plan to update 48 passports from 4.1.6.3 to 5.1.1.1 in the next 4 weeks.

Can you give me more information about software 5.1.1.1 and RS blades. In the next months we are planning to use the 8612XLRS blades.

Many thanks in advance for your help
Michael