Overview on Software Upgrades for J Series Services Routers

J Series Services Routers are delivered with Junos OS 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 device does not have a secondary boot device configured and the primary boot device becomes corrupted, you can reload the Junos OS package onto the corrupted CompactFlash card with either a UNIX or Microsoft Windows computer.

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

For information about which devices support the features documented in this chapter, see the Junos OS Feature Support Reference for SRX Series and J Series Devices.