Upgrading 4.07 to 4.1.2 in HA environment

[gmoerschel]

The following change log may be useful to all of you wondering how an upgrade goes in an HA active-passive pair. It would be nice if PAN support were to put this into a tech note. Each step is essentially a check or an observation from top to bottom.

2050 Firewall Upgrade 4.07 to 4.1.2 Log:

Pre download of PAN-OS 4.1.0 and 4.1.2 to both units

No commits pending

firewalls shows HA is in synch

Same version of dynamic updates are installed on both units

Backup configs from both and export them

On PAN2 (the current passive), suspend the unit via GUI:device/ha/suspend @ 9:17 am

PAN2 upgrade to 4.1.0 starting @ 9:18am

PAN2 reboot @ 9:22

PAN2 back up at 9:25 and auto com until 9:38. PAN2 comes up as non-functional state. Note that the unit will not be able to log you in for several minutes as the upgrade process is happening.

PAN2 Started 4.1.0 to 4.1.2 upgrade at 9:40

PAN2 reboot at 9:44

PAN2 back up at 9:50 and auto com until 9:53. PAN2 comes up as non-functional state.

Because 4.1.x HA is not compatible with 4.0.x HA there is no way to make the newly upgrade firewall the active. The older fw code must be suspended first and then the new fw is made functional which then brings it into the active state. Because of this limitation, the sessions going through the active will sever when it is suspended. Detail below:

do quickly PAN1 from cli: request high-availability state suspend

NOTE: active sessions will sever when active becomes suspended

do quickly PAN2 from cli: request high-availability state functional

PAN2 immediately becomes active. loss of 14 pings

PAN1 upgrade to 4.1.0 starting @ 10:56am

PAN2 (not PAN1!!) redefined pre-emption to 98 to be favored over PAN1 so that PAN1 does not become active upon reboot into initial 4.1.0 install.

PAN1 reboot @ 11:04

PAN1 back up at 11:10 and auto com until 11:20

PAN1 state shows as "initial" after auto com completes

PAN1 Started 4.1.0 to 4.1.2 upgrade at 11:23

PAN1 state transitioned to passive while 4.1.2 upgrade was running

PAN1 reboot at 11:27

PAN1 back up at 11:32 and auto com until 11:35. PAN1 comes up as passive.

HA dashboard widgets on both sides show no errors and states are synched.

PAN2 pre-emption number set back to 101 then PAN2 was suspended. At this point an auto com job started running on PAN2 after PAN1 became active. This job took about 1 minute. This may be a synch check.

PAN2 commit config (to set back preemption value to 101)

PAN2 "request high-availability state functional" and state then becomes passive

Process completed at 11:43 am

Post upgrade items to do:

Download GlobalProtect client

Activate GlobalProtect client

Enable user ID on outside zone per error message (probably a Global Protect requirement)

Ensure User-ID agent reconnects

Test GlobalProtect upgrade and function

[jdelio]

Thanks for posting this and adding to the discussion here.

Kind Regards

[User_333]

Isn't it possible to upgrade directly to 4.1.2? Why is this intermediate step to 4.1.0 needed?

[gafrol]

Unfortunately you cannot upgrade from 4.0.7 to 4.1.2. You have to upgrade to 4.1.0 first otherwise the upgrade will fail...

rgds Roland

Omicron AG - Wallisellen 🙂

[MichaelWright]

This is very well put together. Thank you for taking the time to do this for everyone.

[gmoerschel]

See notes in original thread that you must go to 4.1.0 first which is the basis for that code train. 4.1.2 includes modifications to the base code.

[migration]

Correct me if I am wrong but you only have to download the 4.1.0 code?  I upgraded a couple of 5020's that way last week.

[User_333]

Yes, it's definitely not needed to INSTALL 4.1.0 in front of a upgrade to 4.1.2. The only requirement is a downloaded 4.1.0 Firmware. This is described in the Admin Guide (Page 38) too:

You must have a base image downloaded before you can install an update  version. For example, you must have 4.1.0 downloaded (not installed)  before you can upgrade your 3.1.9 device to 4.1.4.

[licenselu]

Hello,

In the initial post, I saw that the timeframe between the reboot and the autocommit is 15 minutes !!

It's the normal boot time for PA 2000 series ??

PS : all my PA 500 series boot in less than 6-8 minutes. Twice for PA 2000 series ??

Regards,

Hedi

[DanDre]

Thanks for the information! Just did this on our 5050-clusterpair without any problems.

[tgeorge]

Thanks, followed your document to perform the upgrades on our PA-500 HA Pair.  Much appreciated.

[BSadozai]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to upgrade our PAN 2050 yesterday evening from 4.1.8 to 5.0.1
directly and had issue with error message on my active unit seeing that (peer
non functional and peer version no compatible or not the same as local,
something like that).

After searching and didn't find any doc that explain the process upgrade
from 4.1.x to 5.0.X I did a downgrade, and today I saw this discussion that is
very helpful. do you thing that I have follow the same process described here
to upgrade to 5.0.1 and do you thing that is really mandatory to pass first by
5.0.0 before going to 5.0.1.?

Thanks for your help

BES

[mbutt]

Hi BES,

When upgrading to a major release in you case from 4.1.8 to 5.0.1 you have to always install the base release of the Major release.

So in other words when upgrading from 4.1.8 you first have to download 5.0.0 and then download and install 5.0.1.

Hopefully this helps.

Thank you

Numan

[BSadozai]

Thanks for your quick answer, but in fact I already did that, i mean I downloaded on both my devices active and passive first v5.0.0 (without installing as was specified by the device, just download) and after that I downloaded the v5.0.1 and installed on passive unit, but after the reboot of the passive unit I had the status non fonctional and on the active I saw the HA status ( something like peer non fonctional (peer version nocompatible or mismatch) so I did the downgrade.

Could be very helpfull from Palo to have a official process or doc for that, I really dont understand way there is no doc for that.

thanks alot

BES

[msullivan]

Here is a nice 'how to' doc:

https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/docs/DOC-4043

Cheers,

Mike