Upgrading Cisco VCS from X6.1 to X7.1

This is just a quick blog on a recent upgrade I did for a VCS X6.1 system to X7.1. The upgrade was pretty painless but I wanted to highlight two points of interest. Well, interesting to me anyway...

Upgrading from Factory Built X6.1

The first is a RTFM item that I almost missed. Fortunately, I caught this on a second read through. From the X7.1 release notes, if you have a VCS unit that was shipped with X6.1 pre-installed, you will need to do some CLI tinkering for the backup process to work correctly. I suppose something was missed in the build. Anyway, in summary:

1. SSH to the Cisco VCS 
2. Login as root
3. Create the /tandberg/persistent/oti and /tandberg/persistent/management folders
4. Logout 

Example:

wolverine:~wjb$ssh root@10.3.9.20

root@10.3.9.20's password:

~ # mkdir /tandberg/persistent/oti
~ # mkdir /tandberg/persistent/management
~ # exit

Getting an Upgrade License

This was a new one on me. I am used to upgrading other Cisco Collaboration applications but have only applied an upgrade to the VCS under the Tandberg regime. The process is pretty simple. First, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/license and log in using your CCO account. From here, you should scroll down to the section under Product Authorization Key (PAK) and RMA License Transfer. You will see a "tab" option called Tandberg Software Upgrade & Look up.

After clicking the Tandberg Software Upgrade & Look up select the "Register for a Tandberg Software Upgrade License" link. You will need the Serial Number and MAC address from your VCS unit. Enter that data, click on the GetVersion button and then the rest is self-explanatory. 


NOTE: You may not see X7.1 listed in your entitlement drop down [I saw X7.0(y)] versions only). Just pick the latest X7.0, the license key will work fine and dandy.


Read More
There is a good discussion on the Cisco Support Community where Martin provides a good jump point for looking at X7.1. Of particular interest, Cisco provides an OVA for VCS. Yes, that's right vVCS! More on that later.

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