Introduction
The purpose of this document is to help you understand the IOS XR software release strategy and help you select the optimal IOS XR release for deployment in your production network.
| This content of this document, including the projected release dates, should be understood only as a guideline. I suggest that you always contact your account team at Cisco to obtain a the IOS XR suggestion for your specific deployment scenario. |
Official information on IOS XR releases is available in the "Guidelines for Cisco IOS XR Software"document.
What Is An Extended Maintenance Release (EMR)
For us at Cisco it is very important to deliver the new features and hardware that your network requires, while at the same time maintain the high software quality. We are continuously investing efforts to improve the quality of our software and hardware. We are adjusting our culture, processes and practices to achieve that goal.
One of the key concepts in the software quality plan is the Extended Maintenance Release (EMR) introduced in IOS XR for the first time with the release 4.3.4.
Extended Maintenance Release (EMR) criteria:
- No new software features
- No new HW support
- Incoming bug rate to drop by at least 90% from peak rate for that release.
- Zero critical bugs.
By choosing the EMR for deployment, you are making the optimal choice. We will be happy to work with you on EMR early field trials or any other way to help synchronise your upgrade/migration plan with the EMR release schedule.
By selecting the EMR you are not only making sure that you are getting the best quality release, you are also selecting a release with the highest deployment rate.
Benefit Of Upgrading To A Most Recent EMR
Software Stability
Impact:
| Software Quality
Impact:
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Vulnerability Risk:
| New functionalities:
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Managing Your IOS XR Install Base
Keeping your IOS XR installation up to date with is very important. We continue providing software patches through Software Maintenance Units (SMUs) and Service Packs (SPs).
Manual SMU and SP install is a thing of the past since the introduction of the CSM Server. CSM Server is a web based server side automation and orchestration framework designed to ease the SW maintenance for all IOS XR platforms. After installing CSM Server 4.0, in-application upgrade is available for keeping your CSM Server application up to date.
To get the glimpse of the CSM Server we highly recommend to watch the _video_. CSM Server distribution comes with a documentation included, but you can also read more about it on _supportforums_.
Another benefit of deploying EMR is that more software patches are available compared to other releases. Number of software patches (SMUs) available per release is directly proportional to the number of our customers running the release. Also, on EMR we try to provide, when technically feasible, SMUs for issues affecting the usability of IOS XR, not only for critical issues directly impacting the services. Service Packs (SPs) are also built more frequently compared to non-EMR releases.
SMU and SP concepts are explained in the "Service Pack Overview for Routers that Run Cisco IOS XR" document.
Service Packs on are built on EMR every 8 weeks. On non-EMR builds are on-demand, but never more frequent than on EMR.
SMU vs SP
Before the introduction of CSM Server, deriving the optimised SMU list for a given install base was a challenging task. Service Pack (SP) was introduced to deliver on operational simplicity.
On 32-bit IOS XR, SP is a single package that can be installed on the system regardless of the active base packages. For example, if BNG package is not active on the system, all BNG elements in the SP are ignored during SP activation.
On 64-bit IS XR, SP is a tarball containing the optimised set of production SMUs posted to date. User should unpack the tarball and install only the RPMs of interest individually or by re-packaging them into a new tarball. For better alignment to the SP concept, from year 2021 onwards the 64-bit SP will be provided in a form of a Golden ISO image.
If you are using CSM Server to manage your install base, CSM Server optimises the SMU set for you, allows you to define "software profiles" (set of base packages plus SMUs or SP) and allows you to easily install the same profile on multiple nodes. You can also run conformance reports. With this CSM Server functionality, the choice between SMU and SP is really down to a user preference. CSM Server delivers the same operational simplicity for users who prefer SMU over SP or vice versa.
64-bit vs 32-bit IOS XR
The 64-bit flavour of IOS XR is available for ASR9000 starting from XR release 6.1.2. Up to and including IOS XR major release 6.6.x, there is no different release number for the 32-bit and 64-bit IOS XR. The 64-bit software packages are designated by the 'x64' in the package name (e.g. ASR9K-x64-iosxr-px-6.1.2.tar). Split between 32-bit and 64-bit release numbering starts with IOS XR major release 7.0.x. As a consequence, the 7.x.x releases are available only for 64-bit capable platforms. Support for 32-bit IOS XR on ASR9000 continues with 6.7.x, 6.8.x, etc.
For more information, including the required minimum hardware for running 64-bit IOS XR on ASR 9000 platform, refer to the "Cisco ASR 9000 Series IOS XR 64 Bit Data Sheet".
CSM Server contains a module that seamlessly performs the migration from 32-bit XR to 64-bit XR. We highly recommend you to watch this short demo video.
New IOS XR platforms NCS500, NCS5000 and NCS5500 only support the 64-bit flavour.
Suggestions For Year 2021
Suggested releases for validation and deployment in calendar year 2021/2022 are:
| Platform | Release | Comment |
| 8000 | 7.3.3 | EMR for Cisco 8000. Not planned for other platforms. |
| ASR9000 | 7.1.3 / 6.7.3, 7.3.2 | A9K-RSP440 must stay with 6.4.2 (EoS-EoL notice) |
| CRS | 6.7.4 | 6.7.4 was released only for CRS |
| NCS540 | 7.2.2, 7.3.2 | |
| NCS560 | 7.2.2, 7.3.2 | |
| NCS5000 | 7.1.3, 7.2.2, 7.3.2 | 7.1.3, 7.3.2 as satellite to ASR9000; 7.2.2 for standalone deployments; |
| NCS5500 | 7.2.2, 7.3.2 | |
| NCS6000 | 7.2.2 | |
| XRv9000 | 7.2.2, 7.3.2 |
The following table shows the IOS XR release schedule planning for year 2021.
Disclaimer: future release dates and numbers are tentative and may change without notice. (*) LA == Limited Availability. If you need access to this release please contact your account team at Cisco | ||
| Release | FCS | Comment |
| 7.1.3 EMR | 2020-12-01 |
|
| 6.7.3 EMR | 2020-12-01 |
|
| 7.2.2 EMR | 2021-01-29 |
|
| 7.3.1 | 2021-02-28 |
|
| 7.3.2 EMR | 2021-Q3 |
|
| 7.3.3 EMR | 2021-Q3 |
|
| 7.4.1 | 2021-Q2 / 2021-Q3 |
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| 6.8.1 | 2021-Q2 / 2021-Q3 |
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| 7.4.2 | 2022-Q1 |
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| 6.8.2 | 2022-Q1 |
|
We hope you find this document useful. Happy roll-out of IOS XR!
Related Documentation
- Upgrade procedures
- XR End-of-Life and End-of-Sale Notices
- Guidelines for Cisco IOS XR Software
- Cisco Software Manager overview and user guide
- Cisco CLI Analyzer
- Tags:
- CSM IOSXR asr9000 asr9k ncs6000 ncs6k ncs5000 ncs5500 ncs5k XRv9000 XRv9k
- https://community.cisco.com/t5/service-providers-documents/ios-xr-release-strategy-and-deployment-recommendation/ta-p/3165422/page/3
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