No Hw-module Slot 1 Oversubscription
Upgrading a 6500 is pretty straight forward, provided the necessary is done in the right order. I’ve listed the steps I would typically take to fully upgrade a single Cisco-6509-E (single Route-Processor) with a IPSEC VPN SPA blade.
The 1:1 ratio means no oversubscription of the PCIe lanes from the processors and results in maximum NVMe drive bandwidth. Near-balanced NVMe configuration. Unlike the 16-drive and 24-drive configurations, that 20-drive configuration has eight NVMe drives connected to processor 1, and 12 NVMe drives connected to processor 2. If fpga code is update without the use of 'force' the card is able to boot without any issues in a 12.0(32)S node Log message seen after fpd 'force' upgrade and loading of 12.0(32)S6:%MBUS-6-NOFPGAIMG: No FPGA image available for slot 1.
Please lab this if possible BEFORE trying it in a production network. I have illustrated the steps to be taken if some of the known funnies occur during an upgrade. Feel free to use this as a guideline.
Firstly download the IOS and image versions, you need. Obviously do a little homework and check the specific IOS for known bugs using the Bug Toolkit. Don’t just pick any IOS. Make sure all the required features are relatively bug free.
Copy the downloaded files to the following locations:
- ROMMON firmware to sup-bootflash
- BOOTLDR to bootflash
- IOS to flash disk
I always use FTP if possible, due to the higher transfer rates. 10.3.29.239 is connected to the switch and is running a FTP server, expecting a username:password of cisco:pass.
I would recommend verifying the IOS images after copying. It’s relatively easy for the image to get corrupted during copying. No need to waste time with corrupt images, when it can be avoided.
It is generally safe practise to backup the working running-config to a file on flash disk0:
1- Lets start, first upgrade the Rom-Monitor:
Confirm the current boot variables:
2- Specify the new BootLDR to load during boot:
3- Specify the order of the booting images. Firstly the new IOS image, secondly the previous working IOS image. Refer to a previous post, why to do this HERE.
4- Reload the box.
5- If during startup, you encounters config related errors like the ones below, make a note of each command the new IOS didn’t apply:
Do not save the config at any time before reloading using “write mem” or “copy run start”.
Else you will overwrite a working config with the above commands missing.
6- Rename the new IOS file on flash to force the next boot to use the second IOS file listed in boot command along with the working config:
7- If the box has a VPN-SPA blade for offloading IPSEC encryption/decryption, it might be necessary to upgrade the SPA FPD (Field Programmable Devices) code.
Before reloading confirm if the SPA FPD code matches the new IOS version.
The following command will show the current/required version:
8- If the min. required version is higher than the current version, the FPD code must be upgraded. Download the supporting .pkg from from Cisco and copy it to the flash disk:
9- Then upgrade the SIP and the IPSEC SPA
10- Reload the box again. This time the old IOS will be used to boot since the new IOS file is not available. The list of error commands (Point 5) needs to be corrected, either manually or by using notepad. I would suggest using notepad)
11- Copy the running config to your laptop:
12- Edit the config file in notepad. Ensure all the commands are corrected for the new IOS. Here is a list of commands I needed to change with this upgrade:
13- Rename the config-file to something else, and copy the new config-file back to disk0. Confirm there are now two config-files (original and new):
14-Load the changed config to the startup configuration:
15-Rename the NEW-IOS file back to the original name as listed in the boot command:
16-Reload the box the last time. If all was done correctly, everything should be working.
17-Proceed with testing STP, IGP’s, LDP, BGP and VPN’s and Crypto’s.
No Hw-module Slot 1 Oversubscription Port-group 1
For a good overall look at what the 6500 is doing, use the following command :