Firmware Upgrade Stack from MS 11.22

[CodyNetworkGuy]

Hello all,

I have a few switch stacks at the medical facility I work that I have inherited from my previous coworker. These switches are MS250-48P and are running MS 11.22 they are quite behind in firmware upgrades. I work a hospital and am trying to be deadly accurate on how long and when I update these switch stacks.

My question is when I upgrade these since it is quite a few versions behind will it upgrade to the latest or greatest or to a newer version requiring another firmware upgrade and likely another reboot. It looks like 14.3X is the newest stable version.

I do know some later versions of 11.3x had some patches for switch stacks just want to make sure this shouldn't be an issue. I'm not looking for latest and greatest just reliable and stable and more secure/current.

What should version should I expect when I schedule this upgrade and downtime for our facility?

Edit: After scheduling the firmware upgrade it looks like it is showing a upgrade from MS 11.22 to MS 14.32. This looks like the newest version at this time.

The reason I had this question was from the Managing Firmware Upgrades FAQ.

[MerakiDave]

@CodyNetworkGuy you are ok to do this in your case without requiring an intermediary firmware version.  In the event there *is* an intermediary version, Dashboard will flag that as an "upgrade barrier" and disallow the change. Also, I would consider going with 14.33 which is the current SRC and should be promoted to GA sometime soon. 

[CodyNetworkGuy]

It will several weeks before this change is implemented. By that time I'm sure 14.33 will likely be the current software. 

Another concern was this Meraki "Site" has several different switch stacks it looks like they are going to be getting the firmware upgrade. Is there any way to spread these updates out between stacks? I can't have all of these switches trying to reboot at the same time. This is a 7/24 production environment.

I have looked, but it looks like the entire "Site" listed in the Meraki web interface. Which is 17 switches with 4+ switch stacks gets the firmware upgrade. Anyway to spread this out besides splitting these switch stacks up onto different sites?

[JacekJ]

There is a functionality called "Staged Firmware Upgrades" for the switches, but I don't know since which FW version this is available (maybe its FW independent?).

Its in BETA, but I tested this a few times and it behaved as intended. First you schedule the upgrade and then you "split" it like shown in the documentation:

https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Other_Topics/Staged_Firmware_Upgrades_for_Meraki_MS_Switches

If you plan to upgrade stack members at different times, to keep the whole stack running all the time, then better watch out and ask support directly if this is ok.

Meraki switches have quite a few bugs with stacking and can misbehave when you reboot stack members independent from each other.

[cmr]

Adding to what @JacekJ has said, I've used the staged upgrades many times on stacks, but only on more recent firmware versions that 11.x, however I cannot see why it would make a difference.  I would also urge only splitting out stacks from each other, rather than separating members of one stack into different upgrade windows.  I tried the latter a few times and one time (14.31 -> 14.32 for a stack of three MS355-48Xs) the middle switch just went orange and needed the power leads pulled to recover...  Otherwise it has always worked out perfectly.