Now that Cisco has finally released the software for the Cisco ASA 1000v virtual security appliance, I am eager to install it and get a feel for its capabilities. However, before I can get to the fun part and start playing with the virtual ASA, I will have to upgrade the virtual infrastructure in my lab to the correct versions to support it. Primarily, this means that I will have to upgrade both the Nexus 1000v and the VNMC that I have running in my lab.
In a lab situation, the simplest way to accomplish this would be to just deploy a completely new instance of the Nexus 1000v and then restore its configuration from a backup, but I decided that it would be more educational to actually perform an upgrade from my current Nexus 1000v version 4.2(1)SV1(5.1a) to the version 4.2(1)SV1(5.2) that is required to support the ASA 1000v. According to the Cisco documentation it should be possible to perform this procedure as a hitless In-Service Software Update (ISSU), so I decide to put that to the test and see if there are any gotchas in this process.