Firmware version required for Installing EX9200-6QS line card in existing EX9200 Core Switch

Hello there,

I have been doing some research based on our current requirement.

We need to install a 40G line card on the existing EX 9200 core switch. Below are my findings:

According to the Juniper documents:

Minimum JunOS release required to install the EX9200-6QS is 14.2R1 or later.

Problem report - PR1068396

On EX9200 switches, if an IRB logical interface is configured on an EX9200-6QS line card as part of a VLAN, any device connected through that interface will not be able to route outside of the subnet because EX9200-6QS drops all ARP requests. As a result, the EX9200-6QS line card drops all routed traffic, including both data plane and control plane traffic. Configuring static ARP on devices using the EX9200 as gateway is not a workaround, because the packets are still dropped if the Routing Engine of the EX9200 has the routes and ARP entry for the destination IP. The minimum software release for the EX9200-6QS line card is Junos OS Release 14.2R1. However, if your switch configuration includes an IRB logical interface configured on an EX9200-6QS line card as part of a VLAN, as a workaround, upgrade your software to the release specified in TSB16659.

The software has to be upgraded to 14.2R2-S2 if we configure IRB interfaces and inter-vlan routing.

Technical Bulletin - TSB16659 says that the bug is fixed in Junos OS Release 14.2R2-S2 and all later releases.

As for Juniper's recommended release for EX9200 series switches, they recommend 16.1R6

Currently customer is running - 14.2R7.5 where it does support inter-vlan routing with IRB interfaces.

Now it’s up to us whether we need to upgrade it to the recommended release or just install the line card directly without any upgrade.

Any suggestions/comments/recommendations if the firmware needs to be upgraded or not based on your experiences will be greatly appreciated.