Dodged a bullet, but what to do next time

[bridgeclipbob]

So I got an emergency call on Saturday, system down,  stuck at waiting for CP
I figured the CF was hosed and went to site with a new CF, I knew they were at ver 5.0 so my plan was to convert DB to 6.x , load that to new CF and take care of Licensing first thing Monday A.M. when Mitel opens up.
However, to my surprise, once I arrived onsite,  I saw the were still sitting with a CS chassis, that throws my plan out the window,
as if I remember correctly you can't put 6.0 on a CS box.
Luckily, I was able to get the thing to shutdown gracefully and power up successfully, and then backed up everything.
I realize it's a matter of time until disaster strikes again and with that said I'm getting our sales team involved Monday to get them off the dime. But in theory, what were/are my options in that circumstance assuming I couldn't have recovered the CF.
Can I throw ver. 5.0 over top of a 6.0 CF (i.e. Downgrade the CF)
I've never tried or needed to do that, would it trash the CF ? 

[Tech Electronics]

bridgeclipbob,

Well the issue you were having is most likely a hardware issue not a CF issue; luckily there are very few CF issues.

However, I do know what you are getting at with your question. In the past Mitel has stated not to downgrade a CF as it doesn’t downgrade the OS on it only the software version. This apparently can cause problems with the web portion of the system, but the system operation itself is supposed to work as expected. That being said I would probably watch out for major transitions; say 6.0 down to 3.0.

I keep several old CF cards just for this purpose as we always supplied a new CF when performing upgrades. The reasoning behind that is twofold.

1. If the upgrade goes sideways you can always just put the old CF back in and they are up and running.

2. Once Mitel clears the licensing from the card it leaves you will a known good CF at a lower level for service issues.

We have been doing this since 2.3 as downgrading a new CF to 1.2 caused a huge issue and we didn’t want to go through that again. This does push costs up more for upgrades, but in the end it is worth it to everyone involved.

Thanks,

TE


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[bridgeclipbob]

Thanks for your reply TE

BTW I monitor this forum often and have learned so much from yourself and the other moderators and contributors so thank you very much for that.

Interesting that you felt it was not the CF but that you think it was hardware. I spoke to my onsite contact and asked them if they had any power outages recently and he said that they in fact had had some recently so that's what made me suspect that the CF got corrupted. If it should happen again I think I will heed your advice and pull all the modules and disconnect all the DEI's and reboot and see what I get, so thanks for that suggestion.
As to your other suggestion, I'm asking my warehouse guy for some old 5.0 CF's as you suggested as possible resolution, great idea, I didn't know he kept them.

Regards,
Bob