GTM Code Upgrade

These are a few quick checks as part of the GTM code upgrade maintenance that will be useful.  As part of the maintenance preparatory work, check the license “service check date” as per K7727

Before starting the code upgrade and after the code upgrade, the following can be utilized to check the status of the devices:

From tmsh:

(/Common)(tmos)# show sys software
(/Common)(tmos)# show gtm server | grep -e "Gtm::" -e "Availability" -e "State"

From bash:

/shared/bin/big3d –v

From another client machine:

dig @<GTM1_IP> <WIP_FQDN>
dig @<GTM2_IP> <WIP_FQDN>

Just after the code is upgraded, make sure to run the big3d_install commands as per K13312. This will help to make sure that all the devices run the latest big3d version.

F5 Code Upgrade Steps

This is a rough template of F5 Code Upgrade steps that could be of help for your maintenance work.

  1. Before performing any F5 code upgrade, make sure that the “Service Check Date” on the device is AFTER the License Check Date for the new code version as listed here in SOL7727
  2. Upload the new code to the partition that you prefer on the F5.
  3. cpcfg to the new code version location – Example: cpcfg HD1.2

    Although “cpcfg HD1.x” has worked most of the times, I would recommend backing up the .UCS file in a remote location and also saving a copy in “/shared/tmp/<UCS File>“. After saving the UCS file in the “/shared/tmp/” location, you can utilize “load /sys ucs <path/to/UCS> no-license” to load the configuration as noted in SOL12880

  4. Reboot.This will take about 5-10 minutes for Hotfix updates and about 15-20 minutes when migrating major code version.

Recommended maintenance window is about 1 hour. This could change depending on any application level testing that you would like to incorporate within your maintenance window.

Reference:

F5 Code Upgrade – 10.x to 11.x