Cisco APIC Installation and ACI Upgrade and Downgrade Guide

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Cisco APIC Installation and ACI Upgrade and Downgrade Guide

Guidelines and limitations for upgrading or downgrading

Updated: July 12, 2026

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This topic explains the guidelines and limitations for upgrading or downgrading Cisco APICs, including supported versions, critical actions to avoid, log record accessibility, and procedures for specific releases.

Downgrading Cisco APICs from Cisco APIC 6.2 or newer releases to a release older than 6.2(1) is not supported. See Best practice for downgrade checklists and procedures for details.

  • If at any point in time you believe the upgrade or downgrade has either stalled or failed, it is critical that you do not take any of the actions listed below:

    • Do not reload any Application Policy Infrastructure Controller ( APIC ) in the cluster.

    • Do not decommission any Cisco APIC in the cluster.

    • Do not change the firmware target version back to the original version.

    Instead, follow these guidelines:

    1. View the installer log files outlined in the Troubleshooting section if applicable (see APIC installer log files and ACI switch installer log files ). This will help in understanding if there is still activity ongoing on the devices being upgraded or downgraded.

    2. Collect the tech-support files outlined in the Troubleshooting section (see Best practice for collecting tech-support files ).

    3. Contact Cisco TAC if the upgrade or downgrade does not complete successfully and upload the tech-support files to the TAC case after it has been created.

  • The log record objects are stored only in one shard of a database on one of the Cisco APIC s. Because of this, the log records are not accessible while the Cisco APIC is rebooting for an upgrade or downgrade, unlike other objects that can still be read through another Cisco APIC .

  • To upgrade to the Cisco APIC 6.0(2) release or later, you must perform the following procedure:

    1. Download the Cisco APIC 6.0(2) or later image and upgrade the APIC cluster to the downloaded release. Before this step is completed, do not download the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure ( ACI )-mode switch images to the Cisco APIC . The 6.0(2) release has both 32-bit and 64-bit switch images, but releases prior to 6.0(2) do not support 64-bit images. As a result, downloading the 64-bit images at this time might cause errors or unexpected results. However, if your Cisco APIC s have the 5.2(8) release or later, except for the 6.0(1) release, you can download the switch images to the Cisco APIC before this step the same as you would with any other upgrade procedure prior to 6.0(2).

    2. Download both the 32-bit and 64-bit Cisco ACI -mode switch images to the Cisco APIC . Downloading only one of the images may result in errors during the upgrade process.

      Beginning with the 6.0(3) release, the switch determines which image to install from the Cisco APIC based on the available memory of the switch instead of based on a static mapping. If the available memory of the switch is less than or equal to 24 GB, the switch installs the 32-bit image. If the available memory of the switch is greater than or equal to 32 GB, the switch may be upgraded to the 32-bit image first, then upgraded again to the 64-bit image, which results in two reboots during the upgrade process.

      Modular spine switches install the 64-bit image regardless of the switch's available memory.

    3. Create the maintenance groups and trigger the upgrade procedure as usual. Cisco APIC automatically deploys the correct image to the respective switch during the upgrade process.

  • If you change the switch firmware group during the upgrade process, the upgrade process will not be completed and you may encounter some unexpected upgrade behavior.