JUNOS installation and upgrade on SRX and EX platforms (standalone, SRX chassis cluster and EX virtual chassis). The reason I am putting this here is – I often re-use these procedures and don’t want to search in Juniper knowledge base every time! Also other people might find his useful.

Step1: Transfer the JUNOS installation file to SRX/EX devices

Transferring JUNOS installation file can be done in many ways.

If the JUNOS system is already up and running on the network I prefer to transfer the installation file via SSH. Just use any standard SSH client to do the transfer (SCP, FileZilla, WinSCP). The destination directory should be a temporary directory, I prefer “/var/tmp/”.

If the JUNOS system is not connected to network or a brand new system, then I prefer to do the installation transfer file via USB stick. Just attach the usb to any of the USB port on the JUNOS system. You need to find out the UNIX device name for the USB on JUNOS, do the following –

>start shell
%dmesg

The above will show the USB device name/number at the end of “dmesg“; most of the cases this is “/dev/da1”; so the first UNIX disk partition (it’s called “slice” – s) within this is /dev/da1s1. Now mount the USB to a temporary directory; I prefer /var/tmp/usb’; so create the usb directory and mount it.

%mkdir /var/tmp/usb
%mount -t msdosfs /dev/da1s1 /var/tmp/usb

Now copy the JUNOS installer from USB to local JUNOS partition /var/tmp (this is optional – installation can be done from the mounted USB directory)

%copy /var/tmp/usb/junos-srxme-15.xxxx.tgz /var/tmp

If you are installing JUNOS from local partition – you can disconnect the USB at this stage.

Step2: Installation JUNOS

If it is a standalone system (SRX, EX or other) – you can go straight to the installation.

If it is a SRX chassis cluster without ISSU – you should install JUNOS on both the device but make sure to REBOOT them together at same time. If you couldn’t afford to have downtime during upgrade – there are few other methods (by disconnecting fabric and control link during installation) and also you might considering upgrade to next level Juniper system that does support ISSU.

Commands are following-

>request system software add /var/tmp/junos-xxxx.tgz no-copy validate ; make sure the installation was successful
>request system reboot ; (reboot both non-ISSU/NSSU SRX together at same time)

If your system support nonstop software upgrade (EX33xx to EX82xx virtual chassis cluster – NSSU), then following are the procedures to perform this (assuming all the VC members are same model)-

a. Copy the JUNOS installation file to /var/tmp on the master switch

b. Make sure you have nonstop active routing (NSR) and graceful routing engine switchover (GRES) are enabled on virtual-chassis; example commands are following (on a two node VC)-

#set chassis redundancy graceful-switchover
#set routing-options nonstop-routing
 
#set virtual-chassis member 0 role routing-engine
#set virtual-chassis member 0 serial-number PEXXXXXX (serial number of the switch 1)
#set virtual-chassis member 1 role routing-engine
#set virtual-chassis member 1 serial-number PEXXXXXX (serial number of the switch 2)

c. The installation command is following –

>request system software nonstop-upgrade /var/tmp/junos-version.tgz

d. Reboot the members

>request system reboot ; this will reboot one member at a time

Step3: Back up the JUNOS software to the alternate partition (JUNOS snapshot)

In case the primary partition failed – the JUNOS system will boot from the backup partition (UNIX slice) that has same JUNOS version installed.

>request system snapshot slice alternate ; on standalone SRX or EX
>request system snapshot slice alternate all-members ; on EX virtual chassis

Step4: Perform disk cleanup after installation (optional)

I love to perform disk cleanup after JUNOS upgrade.

>request system storage cleanup dry-run ; this will show the files to be deleted
>request system storage cleanup ; this will delete the files