Cisco Catalyst Center Third-Generation Appliance Installation Guide, Release 3.1.x

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Reimage the appliance

Updated: April 3, 2026

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Overview

Describes the steps that need to be completed to reimage a Catalyst Center appliance.

You might need to reimage your Catalyst Center appliance after some situations like recovering from a backup or changing your cluster link configuration. Complete this procedure to reimage your appliance.

Procedure

1.

Download the Catalyst Center ISO image. Verify that it is a genuine Cisco image.

See Verify the Catalyst Center image.
2.

Create a bootable USB drive that contains the Catalyst Center ISO image.

See Create a bootable USB flash drive.
3.

Reinitialize the virtual drives that are managed by your appliance’s RAID controller: Reinitialize the virtual drives on a Catalyst Center appliance.
4.

Reinstall Catalyst Center onto your appliance.

See Install the Catalyst Center ISO image.

Verify the Catalyst Center image

Before deploying Catalyst Center, we strongly recommend that you verify that the image you downloaded is a genuine Cisco image.

Before you begin

Obtain the location of the Catalyst Center image (through email or by contacting the Cisco support team).

Procedure

1.

Download the Catalyst Center image (.iso, .bin, .zip) from the location specified by Cisco.
2.

Download the Cisco public key (cisco_image_verification_key.pub) for signature verification from the location specified by Cisco.
3.

Download the secure hash algorithm (SHA512) checksum file for the image from the location specified by Cisco.
4.

Obtain the image's signature file (.sig) from Cisco support through email or by download from the secure Cisco website (if available).
5.

(Optional) Perform an SHA verification to determine whether the image is corrupted due to a partial download.

Depending on your operating system, enter one of these commands:

  • On a Linux system: sha512sum image-filename

  • On a Mac system: shasum -a 512 image-filename

On Microsoft Windows, use the certutil tool because it does not include a built-in checksum utility:

certutil -hashfile <filename> sha256 | md5

For example:

certutil -hashfile D:\Customers\FINALIZE.BIN sha256

On Windows, you can also use the Windows PowerShell to generate the digest. For example:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-FileHash -Path D:\Customers\FINALIZE.BIN
Algorithm Hash Path
SHA256 B84B6FFD898A370A605476AC7EC94429B445312A5EEDB96166370E99F2838CB5 D:\Customers\FINALIZE.BIN

Compare the command output to the SHA512 checksum file that you downloaded. If the command output does not match, download the image again and run the appropriate command again. If the output still does not match, contact Cisco support.
6.

Verify that the image is genuine and from Cisco by verifying its signature:

openssl dgst -sha512 -verify cisco_image_verification_key.pub -signature signature-filename image-filename

Note

This command works in both Mac and Linux environments. For Windows, you must download and install OpenSSL (available here) if you have not already it.

If the image is genuine, running this command displays a Verified OK message. If this message fails to appear, do not install the image and contact Cisco support.
7.

After confirming that you have downloaded a Cisco image, create a bootable USB drive that contains the Catalyst Center image. See Create a bootable USB flash drive.

Create a bootable USB flash drive

Complete one of these procedures to create a bootable USB flash drive from which you can install the Catalyst Center ISO image.

Before you begin:

  • Download and verify your copy of the Catalyst Center ISO image. See Verify the Catalyst Center image.

  • Confirm that the USB flash drive you are using meets these requirements:

    • USB 3.0 or later

    • 64 GB minimum

    • Unencrypted

Note

Use only Etcher, the Linux CLI, or the Mac CLI. to burn the Catalyst Center ISO image.

Using Etcher

Procedure

1.

Download and install Etcher (version 1.3.1 or later). You can use this free and open-source utility to create a bootable USB drive on your laptop or desktop.

You can download Etcher for Linux, macOS, or Windows at https://www.balena.io/etcher/.

Note

Use Etcher only on Windows 10 or later to avoid compatibility issues.
2.

From the machine on which you installed Etcher, connect a USB drive and then start Etcher.
3.

In the top-right corner of the window, click Etcher Settings Icon and verify that these Etcher settings are set:

  • Auto-unmount on success

  • Validate write on success
4.

Click Back to return to the main Etcher window.
5.

Click Select Image.
6.

Navigate to the Catalyst Center ISO image you downloaded previously. Select it, and then click Open.

You should see the name of the USB drive you connected under the drive icon (Drive Icon). If it is not:

  1. Click Select drive.

  2. Click the radio button for the correct USB drive, and then click Continue.
7.

Click Flash! to copy the ISO image to the USB drive.

Etcher configures the USB drive as a bootable drive with the Catalyst Center ISO image installed.

Using the Linux CLI

Procedure

1.

Verify that your USB flash drive is recognized by your machine:

  1. Insert a flash drive into the USB port of your machine.

  2. Open a Linux shell and run this command: lsblk

    The command lists the disk partitions that are configured on your machine, as shown in this example:

    $ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 446.1G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 1M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 28.6G 0 part /
├─sda3 8:3 0 28.6G 0 part /install2
├─sda4 8:4 0 9.5G 0 part /var
├─sda5 8:5 0 30.5G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sda6 8:6 0 348.8G 0 part /data
sdb 8:16 0 1.8T 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 426.1G 0 part /data/maglev/srv/fusion
└─sdb2 8:18 0 1.3T 0 part /data/maglev/srv/maglev-system
sdc 8:32 0 3.5T 0 disk
└─sdc1 8:33 0 3.5T 0 part /data/maglev/srv/ndp
sdd 8:48 1 28.7G 0 disk
└─sdd1 8:49 1 12G 0 part

  3. Confirm that an sdd partition is listed. This partition indicates the presence of a USB flash drive.
2.

Burn the Catalyst Center ISO image you downloaded previously onto your USB flash drive: time sudo dd if=/data/tmp/ISO-image-filename of=/dev/flash-drive-partition bs=4M status=progress && sync

For example, to create a bootable USB drive using an ISO image named CC-SW-1.330.iso, you would run this command: time sudo dd if=/data/tmp/CC-SW-1.330.iso of=/dev/sdd bs=4M status=progress && sync

Using the Mac CLI

Procedure

1.

Determine the disk partition associated with your USB flash drive:

  1. Open a Terminal window and run this command: diskutil list

    This command lists the disk partitions that are configured on your machine.

  2. Insert a flash drive into the USB port on your machine and run the diskutil list command a second time.

    The partition that is not listed the first time you run this command corresponds to your flash drive. For example, assume that your flash drive partition is /dev/disk2.
2.

Unmount the flash drive partition: diskutil unmountDisk flash-drive-partition

Continuing our example, you would enter diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

3.

Using the Catalyst Center ISO image you downloaded previously, create a disk image: hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o Catalyst-Center-version ISO-image-filename

Continuing our example, assume that you are working with a Catalyst Center ISO image named CC-SW-1.330.iso. You would run this command, which creates a macOS disk image named CC-1.330.dmg: hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o CC-1.330 CC-SW-1.330.iso

Do not put the ISO image in a Box partition.
4.

Create a bootable USB drive: sudo dd if=macOS-disk-image-filename of=flash-drive-partitionbs=1m status=progress

Continuing our example, you would run this command: sudo dd if=CC-1.330.dmg of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m status=progress

The ISO image is about 18 GB in size, which can take around an hour to complete.

Reinitialize the virtual drives on a Catalyst Center appliance

Complete this procedure to reinitialize the virtual drives on your Catalyst Center appliance.

Procedure

1.

Log in to the appliance's Cisco IMC using the Cisco IMC IP address, user ID, and password you set in Enable browser access to the Cisco Integrated Management Controller.
2.

From the top-left corner of the Cisco IMC GUI, click the Toggle Navigation icon (Toggle Navigation Icon).
3.

From the Cisco IMC menu, choose Storage > Cisco 12G Modular Raid Controller.
4.

Click the Virtual Drive Info tab.
5.

Check the check box for the first virtual drive that's listed (drive number 237). Click Initialize.
6.

From the Initialize Type drop-down list, select Full Initialize.
7.

Click Initialize VD.
8.

Repeat Step 5 through Step 7 for the other appliance virtual drives, but select Fast Initialize.

Only the first virtual drive requires full initialization.
9.

To view the status of the task running on a drive, in the Operations area, click Refresh.

These details appear:

Field Description

Operation

The name of the operation that is in progress on the drive.

Progress in %

The progress of the operation, in percentage complete.

Elapsed Time in secs

The number of seconds that have elapsed since the operation began.

Install the Catalyst Center ISO image

Complete this procedure to install the Catalyst Center ISO image onto your appliance.

Before you begin

Create the bootable USB drive from which you will install the Catalyst Center ISO image. See Create a bootable USB flash drive.

Procedure

1.

Connect the bootable USB drive with the Catalyst Center ISO image to the appliance.
2.

Log in to Cisco IMC and start a KVM session.
3.

Power on or power cycle the appliance:

  • Choose Power > Power On System if the appliance is not currently running.

  • Choose Power > Power Cycle System (cold boot) if the appliance is already running.
4.

In the window that appears, click Yes to acknowledge that you are about to execute a server control action.
5.

When the Cisco logo appears, either press the F6 key or choose Macros > User Defined Macros > F6 from the KVM menu.

The boot device selection menu appears.
6.

Select your USB drive and then press Enter.

Note

Mount the drive as a removable disk.
7.

In the GNU GRUB bootloader window, select Catalyst Center Installer and then press Enter.

Note

The bootloader automatically boots the Catalyst Center Installer instead if you do not make a selection within 30 seconds.

The installer reboots and opens the wizard's welcome screen. Continue to Step 4 using the appropriate procedure according to whether you will configure a primary or secondary cluster node: