How much downtime is involved in a Jumbo upgrade?

[BD86]

Nothing crazy - we have a 6200 that needs a jumbo installed. We don't have an HA-pair, so this is a standalone 6200, so there will obviously be some downtime involved. I'm just trying to figure out how long I should expect services to be down so I can best prepare. Are we talking a few seconds, few minutes, longer? 

Is it really as easy as just going into SmartConsole, clicking Actions > Install Hotfix/Jumbo > Install? Is there anything else I need to be aware of or is that it?

Thanks!

[Magnus-Holmberg · Accepted solution]

The box will do a cpstop during the installation aswell as a reboot.
So i would expect nothing less than 30min and probably more.

[BD86]

Ahh bummer. I was hoping it'd be a quick install and bounce, aka 2-5 mins or however long it took for the device to power back up and auto-start services.

[the_rock]

I think @Magnus-Holmberg gave the worst case scenario : - ). 30 mins sounds a bit too long in my personal opinion. I helped people with single gateways before and longest I had seen was 15 mins downtime, but that was older model appliance. If you have decent IPS link pipe and 6200 model (even base one), I really would not expect more than 10 mins or so. But, as Magnus said, box does  cpstop when installing the hotfix, so that is prior to reboot. Once box is rebooted, make sure policy is correct by running fw stat from expert mode.

The process you listed is as easy as that...just make sure to verify, as it would confirm if there are any incompatibilities with previous jumbos / custom hotfixes (if any), disk space...

Andy

[Magnus-Holmberg]

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. 🙂

If i would request for a service window, i would request for 30min downtime.
As this is a location/site that clearly accepted to have a single firewall that should be no issue what so ever.
If the location/site expect seconds or <1min downtime i would suggest to add a second firewall 😉
So my comment also has to do with set exception on what it means to have a single gw. 

[the_rock]

Yes sir Magnus, very well said indeed! ; - )

[genisis__]

In my option:

- Depending on what kernel version and Storage you have on a 6200 this can influence the time to install/boot.

- I would generally say between 10 - 15 total time just for the unpacking, installing and reboot, personally I prefer to uninstall the old jumbo first, then install the new one so double the time.

Clearly you need to do this in a maintenance window, and of course snapshot, as Magnus is also correct on,  allow for worse case scenario, you need to restore the snapshot,  this can take between 30 - 45mins as an estimate.

Of course something else that is good it have is a LOM card or out of band access.