Performing Software Upgrades and Reboots

J-series Services Routers and SRX-series services gateways are delivered with JUNOS software preinstalled. When you power on the device, it starts (boots) up using its primary boot device. These devices also support secondary boot devices allowing you to back up your primary boot device and configuration.

As new features and software fixes become available, you must upgrade your software to use them. Before an upgrade, we recommend that you back up your primary boot device.

On a Services Router you can configure the primary or secondary boot device with a “snapshot” of the current configuration, default factory configuration, or rescue configuration. You can also replicate the configuration for use on another device, or configure a boot device to receive core dumps for troubleshooting.

If the J-series or SRX-series device does not have a secondary boot device configured and the primary boot device becomes corrupted, you can reload the JUNOS recovery software package onto the corrupted CompactFlash card with either a UNIX or Microsoft Windows computer.

Note: The terms JUNOS software (legacy services) and JUNOS software are used frequently in this chapter. JUNOS software (legacy services) denotes the packet-based software for the J-series Services Router, whereas JUNOS software denotes the flow-based software for the J-series Services Router.

This chapter contains the following topics.