Right, this is a fairly easy procedure. However, when I first touched an IOS-XE bin image I managed to nicely transform a stack of 3 x Catalyst 3850 into a lovely expensive brick. This happened back in 2014 only because I thought I have to change the boot statement to “tell” the stack what file to use to boot. I was very wrong and that caused me a lot of pain and misery. I also hit a bug with that particular version of code. About bugs, in a different post.
Just double check the running version of code, make sure you’re on 3.x.x and follow the below steps:
- software clean – this will delete from flash any files that are not in use. Don’t skip this step, thank me later;
- copy tftp: flash: – or just use as source a USB memory stick to download the bin file to flash;
- verify /md5 flash: cat3k_caa-universalk9.16.03.07.SPA.bin – this will check the integrity of the bin file.
- software install file flash:cat3k_caa-universalk9.16.03.07.SPA.bin on-reboot new – upon reboot it will expand and create new files.
- request platform software package clean switch all file flash – most likely during the code upgrade, the bin file you downloaded during the 2nd step was deleted. This command will tell the switch to erase all the files that are not in use and not required in the switch operation.
To download the bin image you’ll have to visit the Cisco website.
If you decide to transfer the file over TFTP, this would be an optional step but I strongly advise you to adjust the blocksize value to 8192. This will save you a lot of your valuable time. You’ll have to use:
#conf t
#ip tftp blocksize 8192
Depending on how many Cisco switches you have to upgrade (single or stacked) this can take roughly 20 minutes for a single switch. On a side note, in normal circumstances (and not during a code upgrade) a Catalyst 3850 will boot up in approximately 8 to 9 minutes.
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