IOS Upgrade Procedure On ME-3600-X Switch

Recently I needed to upgrade the code on one of our Metro Ethernet switches as some of the EVC and bridge domain settings weren’t operating quite as I had envisaged.

I’m new to these switches and the upgrade process is slightly different to the traditional ‘copy tftp flash’, reboot and cross fingers method I’m used to with other Cisco routers.

The first difference I noticed is when I looked at the flash directory.

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ASR 1K Management Interface

One of the nice features in the Cisco ASR 1k line is the use of a dedicated management interface. On first glance at the chassis it looks like any other regular Gigabit interface, however it can be used for management traffic only. Essentially the interface is in it’s own VRF and can’t be placed in any other (ie. the Global VRF) providing separation at the control plane. You could then configure an IP on the interface, plug it into the Management VLAN on your network and disable SSH/Telnet on your public interfaces for ultimate security.

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