Happy upgrading. May your latency be low and your checksums match.
Actually, no—it usually keeps it. But sometimes, the new firmware deprecates a command. Your fancy ACL that worked on version 5.20 might crash version 7.10.
The HP 5130 Resurrection: Why Firmware Upgrades Feel Like Black Magic (And How to Do It Without Bricking Your Network)
Or, “How I learned to stop worrying and love the BootROM.” The Prologue: The Switch That Saw Too Much Let’s be honest. The HP 5130 (now technically an HPE/Aruba brand) is the diesel pickup truck of the networking world. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t have a fancy cloud dashboard. But for the last decade, it has been silently routing packets in a dusty closet, running on a firmware version that remembers when Obama was president. hp 5130 switch firmware upgrade
reboot The console spits out:
tftp 192.168.1.100 get 5130_24G_4SFP_7.10.R3238.ipe The cursor blinks. This is where you contemplate your life choices. A 30MB file over 100Mbps Ethernet takes 5 seconds. Over a slow TFTP transfer because your laptop is on WiFi? It takes an eternity.
display version HPE Comware Software, Version 7.10.R3238 Happy upgrading
Now, the scary part:
display version If you see "Comware Software, Version 5.20," you are in the safe zone. Do not do this on a live Friday afternoon. Do it on a Wednesday at 2 PM when nobody is in the office.
System is starting... Press Ctrl+D to access BASIC-BOOTWARE menu... You ignore that. Ten seconds later, the login prompt appears. You log in. But sometimes, the new firmware deprecates a command
The system is going to reboot. Continue? [Y/N]: As the switch reboots, the fans spin up to jet-engine volume. The console floods with hex codes. You see:
But you are a professional. You do this:
boot-loader file flash:/5130_24G_4SFP_7.10.R3238.ipe slot 1 main The switch stares at you. It runs a checksum. If it says "Verification passed," you breathe. If it says "Incompatible version," you cry. (This means you downloaded the wrong hardware variant—the 5130 has EI and SI models. You have the wrong one).
Boot ROM 1.36 Copyright (c) 2010-2018 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Loading the main image... The line freezes for 45 seconds. This is the "sweaty palm" zone. Do not power cycle the switch. Do not breathe on it. The 5130 is rewriting its own soul.