Dell SmartFabric OS10 User Guide Release 10.5.4

Guidelines for VLT Hardware upgrade or replacement

This section provides guidelines to upgrade or replace VLT hardware.

To upgrade the OS version in an existing VLT configuration, upgrade the VLT peers one after the other. As the VLT and MAC addresses are already synced between the VLT peers, the primary VLT peer takes care of traffic.

During firmware upgrade, configure delay-restore to 120 seconds on orphan ports. Use the delay restore feature to reduce traffic loss during upgrade or reload.

During VLT hardware replacement, initial VLT or MAC address sync is required between the newly added VLT hardware peers. This synchronization is achieved only after both the newly added VLT peers are restarted.

Do not attempt to replace or connect one newly added VLT hardware node to an existing VLT pair with out the initial VLT and MAC address sync. Doing so could result in an erroneous VLT configuration and cause problems in the future.

Before adding the VLT pair to the network, boot up the newly added VLT hardware nodes in advance with pre loaded configurations. Also, turn up all the VLT and orphan ports to monitor their traffic flow.

Ensure that you plan a dedicated downtime to perform VLT hardware replacement and avoid doing it on a production setup.