Junos OS upgrade recommendation to the specific versions that support i40e-2.4.3/NVM-6.01 for virtualized Routing Engine.

Alert Type

PSN - Product Support Notification

RiskRisk Description

Medium

Needed for Junos upgrade plan

ImpactImpact Description

Medium

Customer's Junos upgrade plan can be affected. Also at the time of Routing Engine RMA, both Junos and the FW upgrade process are needed, that can take a longer time for recovery.

Product Affected

MX and PTX series products that are running with the following Routing Engine types, also known as virtualized Routing Engine: RE-S-X6-64G RE-S-X6-64G-LT RE-PTX-X8-64G REMX2008-X8-64G REMX2K-X8-64G REMX2K-X8-64G-LT

Alert Description

Juniper has been shipping virtualized Routing Engines (REs) that have Junos OS 17.4 version pre-loaded for MX series products and PTX series products. As documented in TSB17603 [juniper.net] , an upgrade of i40e NVM to version 6.01 is required for installing a newer version of Junos OS. However, a firmware downgrade in the field is impossible.

This notice is to remind of Junos OS End of Life milestones and to encourage customers to upgrade Junos OS to the versions that support i40e-2.4.3/NVM-6.01 shown in the table below. Juniper plans to start shipping the REs with Junos OS 19.3R1 or even later (19.4R3, for example) starting July 2021. These later versions are WRL9 based Junos VMHOST images and will include the upgraded i40e-2.4.3/NVM-6.01 firmware pre-loaded at the factory. For the affected REs, its i40e NVM firmware cannot be downgraded.

Table 1 - Junos software versions that support i40e-2.4.3 NVM-6.01

Platform	i40e-2.4.3/ NVM-6.01 Support
PTX5000	15.1F6-S11	16.1R7	17.1R3 / 17.2R3 / 17.3R3 / 17.4R2	18.1R1 / 18.2R3 / 18.3R1 / 18.4R1	19.1R1 or later
PTX3000	N/A	16.1R7	17.3R3-S6 / 17.4R2-S7	18.2R3 / 18.2R3-S8 / 18.3R3 / 18.4R2	19.1R2/ 19.2R1
MX240/480/960	15.1F6-S11	16.1R7	17.1R3 / 17.2R3 / 17.3R3 / 17.4R2	18.1R1 / 18.2R1 / 18.3R1 / 18.4R1	19.1R1 or later
MX2010/2020	15.1F6-S11	16.1R7	17.1R3 / 17.2R3 / 17.3R3 / 17.4R2	18.1R1 / 18.2R1 / 18.3R1 / 18.4R1	19.1R1 or later
MX2008	N/A	N/A	17.2R3 / 17.3R3 / 17.4R2	18.1R1 / 18.2R1 / 18.3R1 / 18.4R1	19.1R1 or later
MX10016/10008 PTX10016/10008	N/A	N/A	N/A	18.2R1 / 18.3R1 / 18.4R1	19.1R1 or later

Solution

Please plan Junos OS upgrade as soon as possible, and complete before the end of June 2021. For any concerns, please contact your account team or JTAC.

Modification History

Added Q0/A0 for the progress of ECO 2022-05-27
Update format for readability 2021-12-03