As part of iomart's ongoing commitment to continual improvement and reliability, the iomart network team will be conducting scheduled maintenance to upgrade the deployed software version in use on the Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) network fabric within our Maidenhead (DC5) datacentre.
What will happen?
The Cisco ACI upgrade is a multi-staged process.
As part of the first stage, the iomart network team will upgrade the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controllers (APIC’s) in use within Maidenhead (DC5) from the currently running software version to ACI version 3.1(2m). The upgrade procedure is fully scripted, and only runs on a single APIC controller within the cluster at one time; proceeding to the next controller only once the upgraded controller has fully returned to service.
Once the APIC’s are fully upgraded and confirmed as healthy, the iomart network team will proceed to the second stage of the process; upgrading the Cisco ACI spine switches across the fabric. The spine switches will be upgraded from the currently running software version to ACI switch software version 13.1(2m). Each spine switch will be gracefully removed from service prior to being reloaded as part of the upgrade. Each network pod has three spine switches ensuring that we maintain N+1 availability for spines at all times. All spines will be verified for full health before moving to the third and final phase of the upgrade process.
The final stage to complete the upgrade process is to upgrade the Cisco ACI leaf switches. Each top of rack switch uplink is configured as Virtual Port-channel+ (VPC+) which acts as a single logical switch despite being two physically independent switches with their own discrete control plane. As part of the patch process one half of the VPC+ pair will be gracefully taken out of service, upgraded and reloaded. The remaining VPC+ partner will only be upgraded once the initial peer has fully returned to service and is in sync with its partner.
Once the upgrade has been completed, a health check will be carried out across all Cisco ACI spine and leaf switches including validating that traffic levels match expectations from the same time range within the previous 24 hours.
When will the work be carried out?
The maintenance work will begin at 23:00 (BST) on Saturday 31st March 2018 and last for 8 hours until 07:00 (BST) on Sunday 1st April 2018.
Who will be completing the work?
The iomart network team will be carrying out the upgrade with the Cisco Technical Assistance Centre (TAC) on standby.
Will I experience downtime?
As with any upgrade or maintenance work there is an increased risk, however this upgrade does not require any customer downtime. The iomart network operations centre in conjunction with the iomart network team will be monitoring all customer services throughout the window and following the completion of the upgrade works.
If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this work, please contact the customer services team.
