Hi everyone, my name is Mark McBride and I'm a customer success specialist. And in this video, I'm going to walk through how Nexus Dashboard can help to manage your fabric software life cycle from preparing images to executing an upgrade.00:06The main idea is to move as much work as possible outside of the maintenance window.00:20We'll cover these three areas. 1st, the operational benefit of separating staging, validation, and execution. Second, the three stage workflow and how update groups protect your VPC peers. 3rd, how image management works in monitor mode along with permissions, storage, and fabric settings.00:25And then we'll jump into a demo to review how an existing fabric was upgraded using Nexus Dashboard and how to prep a new environment for upgrades.00:44By the end, you should have a practical checklist for preparing an upgrade and understanding what happens during an upgrade. The biggest operational shift is the pre window staging. Copying an image till switches boot flash does not trigger an upgrade or a reload. This lets us prepare a large set of switches.00:53Days before the change window and validate image integrity, compatibility and EPLD readiness before committing to executing the upgrade. Visibility matters just as much as preparation. We can view logs to give us a live status during operations while the update analysis report helps to identify.01:13By the expected impact of the upgrade. Version visibility and historical records make it easier to answer two important questions. What's running now and what has changed. Finally, the workflow is designed around availability. Maintenance mode can help intelligently redirect traffic before disruptive work.01:33And update groups separate VPC peers so they are not upgraded together. Where the platform supports ISSU, the workflow can take advantage of it. Where it does not, the analysis can help us to plan ahead for a reload. Think of this as prepare, assess, and then execute.01:53Stage one is a synchronous staging. Nexus dashboard transfers a target image to the switches boot flash ahead of the change window. We can do that across multiple switches, and there is also a single step option to combine staging and validation when that fits the operation.02:13Stage two is validation and analysis. Here we check image integrity and hardware compatibility. Then determine whether the proposed update supports ISSU or requires a disruptive reload. The update analysis report is a key review point. It gives your teams a chance to examine the risks and prerequisi.02:31Good steps before making the upgrade. And then stage three is the execution updates for C through the defined groups with maintenance mode available for operations that require traffic isolation. Per switch logs show progress and post update checks to verify the active software and relevant health indica.02:51The practical value is that execution begins with fewer unknowns. For VPC environments, the important safeguard is peer separation. Nexus dashboard places paired switches into different update groups rather than upgrading both sides together.03:12Nexus dashboard can auto generate the update groups and place switches designated with the primary VPC role into one group and switches designated with the secondary VPC role into a separate group. That sequencing protects the redundancy we depend on for dual home devices. It also gives us a clear point.03:31To verify neighbor adjacency and operational state before moving on to the next update group. Grouping is constrained at the fabric boundary, meaning switches from different fabrics cannot be placed in the same update group.03:50Teams can also create custom groups for non VPC devices such as leaf spine or border switches. Monitor mode is useful when Nexus dashboard needs to manage software without taking over general fabric provisioning. For the fabric types listed here, including classic LAN and external.04:05Fabrics, the enabled fabric software update setting must be turned on. It is disabled by default, and this option was introduced in version four.three.one. Once enabled, the permitted image management actions include uploading images, staging validation, and upgrade workflows.04:25Before scheduling an upgrade, I will check these three items. Access image source and fabric state. For access confirm the operator has the appropriate nexus dashboard admin role and configured per user device credentials.04:47Those credentials support device access while audit logging ties actions back to the authenticated user. For the image source, confirm the remote repository endpoint and the credentials and system settings, and verify the imported image passes its integrity checks. This is especially important when images are coming from a remote.05:02Location. And then finally confirm the fabric is deployment enabled. The target switches are managed and the monitor mode software update flag is set in the fabric settings.05:22These checks are much easier to resolve before the maintenance window rather than during it. Let's now jump into a demo. For the 1st demo, we're gonna log into an existing Nexus dashboard environment that's already been on.05:34Onboarded with fabrics for Nexus dashboard and where Nexus dashboard was used to upgrade the devices in the fabric. In this version, we're running four.three.one. So we'll go ahead and log in.05:54Once we're logged in, we're gonna go to manage, and then fabric software. Once we're in fabric software, we can see that we're presented with two tabs here, one for NXOS, iOS XD devices, and then another tab for ACI fabric.06:15On the NXOS tab, we can see the number of images and rpmiss that have been uploaded for the fabric. We can also see software summary where the number of devices that are on the recommended version.06:34And we could also see some release notes for some of the most latest running versions, and we can go to these links and this will take us to the release notes page for that specific version. And here we can get additional details about the version that we maybe upgrading to.06:49Back on the fabric software page, we get a list of all the fabrics that have been onboarded into the environment. And here we can see we've got four fabrics that have been onboarded into this nexus dashboard, and we can also see their types, as well as the current.07:13Software versions that are running for each fabric. We can also see a status on some of the previous upgrades and preparation and validations that have been done for this fabric so it tells us if an update is completed or maybe we're preparing an update or even if a update has failed.07:30We can also see the number of update groups for that fabric and the number of devices for that fabric.07:50Under images, we can see a complete detail list of all the images and rpmiss that have been uploaded to Nexus dashboard. And we can see if it's a feature, the NOS version and if the image is present.08:02So nexus dashboard will tell us if the image type is an RPM or if it's an actual NXOS image that we've uploaded to our repository here. Under update groups, these are the groups that can be used to prepare and apply the updates.08:19And within each fabric, we have the different groups that exist for each fabric. We can see the number of devices.08:38We can also see install, start times and end times and the total time for that update group. And we can see the devices that are part of that update group. We can see the device name, the fabric that it's a part of, its IP address, the update group.08:47That it's in the current running version, as well as a status, the model of the device, the role that's set for the fabric.09:07And we can see also additional information around the system mode that it's running in, and we can even look at the logs page for that device. Here we can see where the update group has been updated for, for this device.09:18So for all the audits that are being tracked, we can see these throughout the additional logs that Nexus dashboard gives us for, for each device. Here we can see that in this update group that we actually have a update status that shows failed.09:34So from here we can look at the devices in that group.09:53And we can look at the, the logs for that device and here we can see the actual commands that Nexus dashboard is using to stage this device. So we can see where the image is being staged to the device, where it's being copied over.09:57And here we can see that the install add command failed where it's telling us that the SMU MD five verification failed and that the SMU image maybe corrupted. So this just gives us indications to go back and verify that image and then re upload.10:18Loaded to Nexus dashboard.10:38And for updates that have completed successfully, we also get these same types of messages that we can look at the logs also. And we can also see that the update type is telling us if it's going to be a disruptive.10:43Of upgrade.11:03So if we look at the logs for an update that did complete successfully, Nexus dashboard will show us all the operations that it went through to do the upgrade, so we can see when the image is being staged and copied over to the device. And then we can see all the steps that it goes through.11:05To go through the upgrade.11:25So we can see all of the install commands that it's using to apply the upgrade. It's telling us that the upgrade is going to be disruptive. We can see that we're going from version 1052 to version 1062.11:27We can look at all of the, the validations and checks that it's going through as it's upgrading the device. So it goes through the install for the upgrade, and we can see all the details as the upgrade progresses.11:45And we can see that the switch is going to go through a final reboot to apply the, the upgrade. And then once the switch comes back online, we can see that the upgrade image status shows is done. So this is one of the things that Nexus Dashboard can do is to be able to.12:03Track all of these operations and changes in detail as you're going through each one of these upgrade groups.12:23Under the devices tab, we can see all of the devices in Nexus dashboard, where we can see the device name, the fabric they're a part of, their IP address, the update group that they're applied to, as well as their current version, what the update type will be.12:32When we go through the validation checks, the status, the model number, and the role of that device. And under history we can get additional audit details for each of the actions that are recurring within the software image update.12:50Whether if it's staging an image to a device or if it's going through the actual upgrade.13:10So the, the history will show us each action that's being captured by Nexus dashboard when we're staging an image as well as, is doing an upgrade to the device itself.13:17For ACI, we can use the fabric software to do a analysis for an ACI fabric, so we can go through analysis report that will tell us some details about what version we're looking to go to for ACI fabrics.13:36Yeah for 2nd part of the demo, we're actually gonna log into another Nexus dashboard environment, which is also running four.three.one.13:53Where we've got a couple of fabrics that have been onboarded, but we haven't configured any of the software image management settings yet So we'll log in and we'll go to manage fabric.14:10And here we can see we've got two fabrics that have been onboarded, one as a external fabric and one is a VXLAN EVPN fabric. As mentioned earlier, we can now use fabrics that are running in monitor mode and then.14:30Apply the software update toggle to be able to use the software image management with fabrics that are in monitor mode. So we'll select our external fabric and then go to actions and edit fabric settings.14:47Here we can see that the fabric is running in monitor mode, and then here we can toggle the button to enable fabric software update. This will allow us to use the software image management with a fabric that is running in monitor mode. So there's NO configuration pushes that are.15:05Being used for this fabric, but we can still use the software update feature.15:24We'll go ahead and click save. From here we'll go to manage and then fabric software. And here we can see the two fabrics that have been onboarded.15:29And we can see that there hasn't been any update groups created for either one of these fabrics. So we'll go ahead and select the auto generate update groups for VXLAN EVPN fabric. And we're gonna set the type to role based. We can also have the option to.15:47Select creating the update group using even odd pairs.16:08So we'll go ahead and select save, and then Nexus dashboard will automatically generate the update groups for us based on the settings in the fabric. So here we can see that it's created.16:14The following update groups for the fabric, where it has created a update group that has the primary leaf within this fabric. So we can see the fabric name and the leaf that is in here. So it was able to identify that this leaf.16:29Has a VPC role of primary.16:50We can also see that it created another VPC update group for the secondary, in which it placed the leaf that is the secondary VPC role. Then it placed the two spine.16:55In another update group.17:13That has our, our two spines in here. So from here what we can do is we can go into one of these update groups and select prepare, then we'll select next.17:15Then we can choose if the update is gonna be non disruptive or disruptive, and then we can select the image that we wanna upgrade to and select next. And here we have the option to create a report.17:35Where we can choose basic, well this will go through a number of fundamental checks to make sure that the switch is capable of performing the software upgrade. We can also create a custom report where we can pick and choose which checks that we want to see in the report.17:52So we'll go ahead and select just the basic report, which will include all of the different checks. We can see that the check types will be pre update and post update, and then these are all of the different checks that it will include in the report.18:10And we'll select next. And then we'll select stage and validate.18:27Now Nexus dashboard will stage the image to the switch and then it will go through the validation check. And then once it's complete, it will give us a pre update analysis report telling us the state of this switch that we can use to review before we're doing the.18:42Upgrade. Here we can see the stage and validation checks have completed, and we can select the view pre update report. And here we can see all of the different checks that are included within the report.19:03Different checks around diagnostics, file system, free space, checking general log messages, the VPC state. We can even download the report into an HTML format and then review this report ahead of performing the upgrade and can.19:20In case there's any items that we need to.19:40Correct before doing the upgrade From here we can choose to continue and install the upgrade or we can select done.19:44And then we can come back and select install update whenever we're ready to perform the actual upgrade. In this demo, we've seen how we can use Nexus dashboard to stage, validate and execute an upgrade. Thanks for watching.20:01
