Upgrade a Cluster of CUCM, the customer dont have a Service Contract

[Meddane]

We have a customer with a Cluster Unified CM and he want to upgrade from 11.5 to 12.5. But the customer he dont have a service contract to download the ISO and Cop Files that we need to perform the upgrade.

Is there an alternative solution?

[b.winter]

You can download the ISOs with your account, if you have other customers / contracts associate, and then do the upgrade.
But you probably will have a problem migrating the existing licenses to the smart account of the customer, if he doesn't have an active service contract.

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

Just confirming you will have a license problem after the upgrade. The customer must have an active subscription for entitlement to new major versions (eg 12.x from 11.x).

Also, 12.5 will reach End of SW Maintenance this August. Customers should be upgrading to 14.x now or 15.x once the first SU is available in a few months.

PS- An upgrade without TAC support is pretty risky IMO. You have no recourse if something goes wrong.

[Meddane]

@b.winter @Jonathan Schulenberg 

Thanks for your answer. For the target version, I will go to 14;

But what about the upgrade itself, since the customer don't have a service contract, what is the alternative or the legal procedure for an upgrade without a service contract.

[b.winter]

You don't need any contracts for the actual doing of the upgrade. Just grab the ISOs you need and do the upgrade. Simply said: you don't pay Cisco for the ISOs, you pay them for the licenses / support.

As already outlined by me and @Jonathan Schulenberg, if you don't have a service contract, you cannot upgrade licenses, you don't get TAC support, but you can always setup or upgrade CUCMs, if you have the ISOs.

[Meddane]

So the customer must buy a service contract for the licenses, otherwise the upgrade is not possible because the risk to get license issues.

[b.winter]

It's not a "risk", because the license issue will be there for sure after 60 or 90 (?) days of grace period.

If you still can get a service contract for the old licenses, or if you need to purchase them from scratch, you have to discuss with the Cisco AM. But this is not really a technical question anymore.

[Roger Kallberg]

As both @b.winter and @Jonathan Schulenberg wrote it is guaranteed that you will have issues with licensing after the upgrade and as Jonathan wrote it’s not recommended to do an upgrade without having a valid support contract in place as if there is any problems whatsoever you’ll on your own without having any possibility of getting help from TAC. IMHO that’s not a risk that you, or anyone else, should be willing to take.

[Kaloyan Botev]

The upgrade itself and the ISOs is the least of your concerns. Find out if you will be able to migrate your customer's license first.

Also, if you have the ability to open a Cisco TAC case, you can request them to publish the ISOs for you. 

[Carlo Poggiarelli]

Hi,

Being the starting release 11.5, I doubt that you will be able to get a new service or a renewal one. That release is in Eol from long ago. You will need to get a new Sub A-FLEX3 before the grace period will expire.

HTH

Regards

Carlo

[azoupas]

hi @Meddane 

upgrade requires a valid support coverage (in order to get media files and also be entitled for lic conversion).
In general, support coverage is done via SWSS or via Flex. But today as we know, SWSS is no longer an option and Flex is the only path. So you can move your CUCM to Flex subscription (order flex3 v14 CUCM lics) and you will be fully covered.
If you need more info on flex3 for CUCM then please have a look at this community post:
FLEX 3 Onpremises CUCM - quick overview (for customers and partners)

hope this helps
Alkiviadis