An Example to Upgrade IOS on Cisco 4500X Switch

July 22 2015 , Written by Cisco & Cisco Router, Network Switch Published on #Cisco Switches - Cisco Firewall

Kingston 32Gb USB Flash with Metal Casing-Using a Kingston USB stick to upgrade the IOS on a Cisco 4500X Switch

How to upgrade the IOS/Software on a Cisco 4500X switch? A Consultant named Roger Perkin (Who is for a Cisco Gold Partner in the UK) shared his experience of Upgrading IOS on Cisco 4500X Switch. What’s it? Let’s have a look.

Roger Perkin said that it will not be covering how to do a hitless upgrade using ISSU with 2 switches in a VSS pair. This process is performed on two switches which are not in production. So to perform the upgrade he has disconnected the VSS link and will upgrade each switch in turn and will then connect the VSS link again.

First copy your image file into the bootflash: of the switch, this can be done via TFTP or USB.

USB is the much easier solution, for this to work you need a compatible USB stick, I have always used a Kingston brand and have never had any problems.(This is the exact USB stick he used for upgrading IOS on Cisco Switches)

Insert the USB stick into the slot on the front of the Cisco 4500X switch as shown above.

From the CLI issue the command dir usbb0: If you get (No such device) your USB is not supported

4500X-SW-01#dir usb0:

%Error opening usb0:/ (No such device)

If your USB is supported this is the output you will see

4500X-SW-01#dir usb0:

Directory of usb0:/

176 -rwx 173555452 Mar 23 2015 18:59:44 +00:00 cat4500e-universalk9.SPA.03.05.03.E

You now need to copy this image from the USB to the bootflash: using the following command

copy usb0:cat4500e-universalk9.SPA.03.05.03.E.152-1.E3.bin bootflash:

This will copy the image onto the bootflash of the switch.

You now need to tell the switch to boot this image.

There are 2 options to do this – Option 1 Rename old IOS

By default the config-register of the switches will be set to 0x2101 when the appliance is shipped out.

The last octet of “1” basically tells the appliance to IGNORE the boot variable string and boot the first valid IOS
(from top to bottom) found in the bootflash.

So you can either delete the old image or rename it. I prefer to rename it.

rename bootflash:OLD_IOS_filename.bin bootflash:OLD_IOS_filename.bin

If you now reload the switch it will boot the newer image.

Option 2 – change boot variable and config-register

The second option is to create a new boot variable

In global config enter the command.

boot system flash bootflash:cat4500e-universalk9.SPA.03.05.03.E.152-1.E3.bin (or your new image name)

Just this will not do anything as with the config register set to 0X2101 it will ignore the boot variable set.

If you change the config-register to 0X2102 the switch will then reference the boot variable.

In global config

config-register 0x2102

Save the config and reload the switch.