Here’s a question that I’ve been asked over and over again.
How can I upgrade the software of a Nortel ERS 8600 Switch?
It’s actually very easy and only takes a few minutes (along with a reboot). If you have dual CPUs (8690SF, 8691SF, 8692SF) your going to need to upgrade both CPUs. If your running in a HA (High Availability) configuration you probably shouldn’t be reading this. I’ll assume that anyone with dual CPUs is running them in a standby configuration. I generally like to upgrade the standby CPU first and then upgrade the primary CPU, the switch will fail over to the standby CPU once the primary CPU starts to reboot.
You’ll need a TFTP server to host the software files. I generally use the TFTP server that comes with Linux (CentOS), however, you can use TFTPD32 by Philippe Jounin on Windows XP/2003. Just drop the TFTPD32 files in the same directory with the Nortel ERS 8600 software release and run the executable.