Templates or Groups for testing of firmware updates?

[TimButterworth]

Hi All,

I have recently inherited the job of managing our Meraki infrastructure, which was installed two years ago by an external company and consists of Cisco Meraki core switches and fibre switches, MS225 network switches and RM36 / MR46 WAPs.

I'd like to update the firmware on our MS225 switches, but all our devices are currently tied to one of two site-specific templates. Therefore, I cannot target a small number of switches to validate the new firmware on.

After doing a bit of research, it looks like I have three options:

1) Deploy the firmware across all the devices and hope there aren't any issues, relying on automated or manual roll-back if serious issues arise.

2) Take the devices out of the Templates and put them into Groups for a Staged Upgrade approach.

3) Create additional Templates so I can have one for testing and one for the majority of our devices.

But I'm not sure what's the best thing to do. We don't have a full support contract for our network at the moment, only a bank of support hours that are quite expensive and I hope to avoid dipping into.

Any advice would be welcome 🙂

Tim

[RaphaelL]

Or Option 4) Ask support to pin the firmware on some specific network / devices

[KathleenJ · Accepted solution]

Hi Tim,

All of your Meraki devices are covered by your enterprise license. What this means is that you have unlimited phone support with Meraki. As was suggested contact support and ask them to pin the firmware for you on specific devices so you can test prior to rolling out an upgrade.

[PhilipDAth]

If you have a spare switch, create a new template called something like "Staging", and bind the switch in the test network to that.

If it is any consolation, all the firmware upgrades to the switches for the last two years have likely worked, as no one has changed the original deployment.  If you stick to the stable releases you are pretty safe.

[TimButterworth]

Thanks for all the replies, I have identified a small number of switches that are in low-impact areas and will ask Cisco to pin the new firmware to those for testing.