Upgrading Cisco 9800 Controllers

Be sure to complete the following prerequisites before upgrading the Cisco IOS XE version of the controller software image:

  • Compatibility with the hypervisor vendor and version being used. If you want to upgrade to a new hypervisor version that is not supported by your current version of controller, you need to upgrade the version of controller before upgrading to the new hypervisor version.
  • Memory requirements of the VM for the controller software image:
  • If the new controller version requires more memory than your previous version, you must increase the memory allocation on the VM before starting the upgrade process.
  • You must use the .bin file to upgrade or downgrade your software. Use the .iso and .ova files for first-time installation only.

Upgrading in Install Mode

Follow these instructions to upgrade from one release to another, in install mode.

Note that transferring large files over TFTP is a time-consuming process.

To perform a software image upgrade, you must be boot into Cisco IOS through boot flash:packages.conf command.

Download file from Cisco.com


  1. Clean up old install files: install remove inactive

2. copy file from the server to the controller: copy scp://10.0.66.18/ C9800-CL-universalk9.16.12.02s.SPA.bin flash:


3. Verify that the image has been successfully copied: to the controller: dir flash: *.bin

4. Install the software to flash: install add file bootflash:C9800-CL-universalk9.16.12.02s.SPA.bin activate commit



Note: the system will reboot automatically after running the install activate command

Verify image version after the upgrade

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