PAN-OS Upgrade from 9.1.x to 10.1.x Question

[asiewert]

I would like to make sure my understanding of the upgrade path is correct before I do the upgrade.

* Current installed PAN-OS version 9.1.10 - Standalone no Panorama

* Below is a screenshot from the upgrade guide ( https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/techdocs/en_US/pdf/pan-os/10-1/pan-os-upgrade/pan-os-u...) 

* Based on the upgrade screenshot above, and based on current released versions of PAN-OS as of 2/3/2022, if I want to go to the preferred release version of 10.1.3, (https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/customer-resources/support-pan-os-software-release-guidance/ta-...) I need to do the following:

1. Upgrade to 9.1.12-H3 and reboot - this is the latest maintenance version

2. Upgrade to 10.0.9 and reboot - this is the latest maintenance version of 10.0

3. Upgrade to 10.1.3 and reboot - this is the version I want to upgrade to

Am I missing anything, or have I gotten anything wrong? 

I opened a case the last time I had a similar question with support and got contradictory advice so I'm turning to the community. Basically support stated that I can skip the feature release, which is obviously completely contrary to what all the documentation says. 

Thanks!

[BPry · Accepted solution]

@asiewert,

Nope, that will work perfectly fine and leads to the smallest amount of downtime possible. I would actually personally recommend that you install 10.1.4 if you're going to 10.1, but that's just me. While it hasn't gained official "preferred" status yet, it fixes a lot of bugs and I haven't seen any new issues introduced with this release across multiple installations. 

[OtakarKlier · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Also since you are already on 9.1.10, you can skip step 1, upgrading to 9.1.12hf-3. I've recently had issues with VPN's and management access when using a 9.1.x release. I would download 10.0 and 10.0.9 and upgrade to 10.0.9. You need the base 10.0.0 before going to any of the 10.0.x version. Same for 10.1.x, you'll need to download the 10.1.0 code first before going to anything 10.1..x

Regards,