I just wanted to let the community know about issues that occur with EX2200 switches running the 15.1Rx Junos versions.
The upgrade from 12.3 to 15.1.R1 worked well and just as expected while each further 15.1 release we upgraded to (also the recent R4 to R5) caused major stability issues with many of the switches.
We tracked down several aspects so far:
- When you copy a new software package to the switch you will already see the switches memory jump well over 75-80% consumed. At that step we did not observe any other problems. However that consumed memory is not going to be cleared once the file has been transferred.
- If you continue and issue the 'request system software add..' for the package the switch is going to consume the remaining memory up to 100% and also 100% CPU load. What you can expect at that point is STP loops, unavailability of that switch and every related subnets caused the loop..
- Doing the copy and upgrade in one command e.g. with 'request system software add http://someserver/jinstall... reboot' will lead to the same issue.
We had few switches where the upgrade made it through to the switch reboot after which the device was up with the new software but the majority of 2200's just fail in operation.
The only workaround we found so far is to copy over the upgrade files to /var/tmp and do a reboot before actually installing the upgrade.
I assume this is also happening on other platforms but had no time to verify it until now as well as opening one more JTAC case.. other platforms like the EX3300 work however which I think is just the case as they got more RAM than the 2200 (512MB).
Hope this will save some of you from problems 