If upgrading from Provisioner 6.2 or earlier, contact TAC@Cisco.com for instructions. If upgrading from Provisioner 6.3, you must first upgrade to Provisioner 6.4 before upgrading to Provisioner 6.5.

The following instructions are for upgrading from Provisioner 6.4 to Provisioner 6.5.

Upgrading from Provisioner or Cisco Server Provisioner (CSP) 6.5 to Provisioner 6.6 is performed by installing the Chuck Berry supplemental package.

An upgrade of the Provisioner PXE Server preserves the OS installation media you have prepared on your Provisioner PXE Server, and the upgrade also preserves existing boot menus, MAC-Specific Provisioning Roles, MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles and Imaging Profiles. Provisioning Role Templates may need to be recreated (see Upgrade Considerations below).

As a precaution however, back up any configuration or script files you have edited or created.

Important:

1) Before upgrading, ensure that your network administrator has not inadvertently changed your underlying networking: provision a system of your choice to make sure that the prior configuration of Provisioner is still valid for both the Provisioner PXE Server and the clients you wish to provision or image on your PXE VLAN.

2) If Provisioner is hosted by a hypervisor (e.g., ESXi), take a snapshot before proceeding with the upgrade.

 

Upgrading to a Newer Version of  Cisco Server Provisioner

 

Preparation:

Download the Provisioner "preparation" and the Provisioner "installation" packages and copy them to /usr/local/linmin/. In the future, patches may be made available and should be also downloaded to the same directory.

 

1) Provisioner Preparation package:

cisco-prep-provisioner-{build#}-{build-date}-{package-date}.exp

For example (your file name may differ):

cisco-prep-provisioner-6-5-0-b1305312225-p1306010918.exp

 

2) Provisioner Installation package:

cisco-provisioner-{Build#}-{Build-date}-{Package-date}-install.exp

For example (your file name may differ):

cisco-provisioner-6-5-0-b1305312225-p1306010904-install.exp

 

The Provisioner PXE Server upgrade process detects and reports differences between the Cisco-supplied configuration files and prior ones modified by the user. Files with differences will be listed and will prompt you to reconstruct changed files.

 

It is important that you log out of all Provisioner PXE Server GUI sessions and close all active browser instances where GUI sessions have been established. This will avoid any potential conflicts and confusion due to GUI upgrades. Once the upgrade is complete, starting a browser and logging will refresh both client and server cached data.  

 

cd /usr/local/linmin

 

# sh cisco-prep-provisioner-{build#}-{build-date}-{package-date}.exp

 

You will be presented with the upgrade option:

^^^^^ provisioner is installed, upgrade?

 

Respond: key 'upgrade' to upgrade, 'q' to quit, then press Enter, allowed->:q:upgrade: [q]: upgrade

 

You will be then be asked to agree to terms and conditions, to the fact that your system time is correct and to other conditions. If you agree to all the terms, please proceed by acknowledging as prompted. The Preparation process will then continue unattended until completion.

 

Note: none of your previous networking values will be altered during the upgrade process.

 

Once the Preparation script has successfully completed, it will detect that the corresponding Installation package is present and you will be prompted:

END: Bare Metal Provisioning Server Preparation

...log upgrade prep implementation date and time

cisco-prep-provisioner-6-5-0-b1305312225-p1306010918.exp ~~ Sat Jun  1 12:58:36 PDT 2013

This server is now prepared and ready for Bare Metal Provisioning (BMP) upgrade.

 

Install EXP package is found in this directory --

cisco-provisioner-6-5-0-b1305312225-p1306010904-install.exp

 

Review the Users Guide for the next step, executing the install package.

^^^^^ note above!

 

Respond: Key 'c' to continue and press Enter:c:q: [] :c

 

You will be then be asked to agree to terms and conditions and to other conditions. If you agree to all the terms, please proceed by acknowledging as prompted. The upgrade process will then continue unattended until completion.

 

When the upgrade process is completed, you will be presented with a message similar to:

The Bare Metal Provisioning server is now configured.

 

Services are not running, a reboot is required to reset system

cached elements and start Bare Metal Provisioning services.

 

See the online Users Guide for GUI configuration and usage procedures.

 

^^^^^ note above!

 

Respond: Press Enter to Finish and Reboot, allowed->:reboot: [reboot]:

 

Reboot your system as prompted. You have completed the upgrade!

 

To verify the upgrade, after reboot, start Firefox, login to the Provisioner PXE Server GUI and observe the contents of the results in "Help/About"

 

And you have now upgraded your system!

 

 

NOTE: your existing license key will keep working once you have done an upgrade. If you instead re-install the Provisioner PXE Server from scratch, your existing license key will stop working (please contact Support with an explanation and a replacement key will be emailed to you). Please learn about how our licensing mechanism works.

 

 

Upgrade Considerations

 

Cisco provides 2 types of control files:

-For MAC-Independent provisioning, they are located in /pub/distro_name/*.cfg or *.xml

-MAC-Specific control files # are located in /tftpboot/templates and are .tmpl files.

-Changes you made to these files will be overwritten during the upgrade process.

 

Provisioning Role Templates periodically get enhanced, e.g., with post-installation boot scripting.The upgrade process backs up all templates, but you may need to merger your changes with the new Provisioning Role Templates.

 

In order to use the revised templates, you must delete existing Provisioning Role Templates then re-create them and merge your prior template changes into the new template(s).

 

With Release 6.5:

- RHEL/CentOS Role Templates were modified to support DHCP IP addressing

- Windows Server 2008 Role Templates were modified to support DHCP IP addressing

- For ESX/ESXi 4.1, you must delete Role Templates and then delete the Install Instance(s) (directory in /home/tftpboot/pub/) then create the Install Instance again.