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USB Flash Drives Usage on SRX Series Firewall Overview

Learn how to format the drive, copy the Junos OS image, and enable automatic installation for remote upgrades and system recovery.

You can use the USB flash drive to simplify the upgrade of Junos OS images when you don’t have console access to an SRX Series Firewall located at a remote site. This feature facilitates Junos OS image upgrade with minimum configuration. You need to only copy the image onto a USB flash drive, insert the drive into the USB port of the SRX Series Firewall, and perform a few simple steps. You can also use this feature to reformat a boot device and recover an SRX Series Firewall after boot media corruption.

All USB flash drives used on SRX Series Firewalls must have the following features:

  • USB 2.0 or later

  • Formatted with any one of these file systems:

    • -FAT

    • -FAT 32

    • -MA-DOS

Guidelines for USB Flash Drives

For the list of recommended USB storage device, see Knowledge Base article KB31622.

The Junos OS package—for example, junos-srxsme-15.1X49-D30.3-domestic.tgz—on a USB device is commonly stored in the root drive as the only file.

Any USB memory product not listed as supported for SRX Series Firewalls has not been tested by Juniper Networks. The use of any unsupported USB memory product could cause unpredictable behavior in your SRX Series Firewall.. Juniper Networks Technical Assistance Center (JTAC) can provide only limited support for issues related to unsupported hardware. We strongly recommend that you use only supported USB flash drives.

This feature is not supported on chassis clusters.

Prepare the USB Flash Drive

Before you begin:

  • Copy the Junos OS upgrade image and its autoinstall.conf file to the USB storage device.

  • Ensure that adequate space is available on the SRX Series Firewall to install the software image.

To prepare the USB flash drive and copy the Junos OS image onto the USB flash drive:

  1. Insert the USB flash drive into the USB port of a PC or laptop running Windows.
  2. From My Computer, right-click the drive Devices with Removable Storage.
  3. Format the drive with the FAT or FAT32 file system.
  4. Copy the Junos OS image onto the USB storage device.

    For the installation process to succeed, copy only one image onto the USB storage device. In Junos OS Release 24.4R1, we renamed the software install images. Images named junos-install-srsxme* are recognized by the system to install Junos OS Release 24.4R1 or later releases. Images named junos-srxsme* are recognized by the system to install Junos OS Release 23.4R1 or previous releases.

  5. Check the drive name detected in My Computer for the USB storage device. Open the command prompt window and type:

    For example, if the drive detected is drive F, type echo “ “ > F:\autoinstall.conf at the command prompt. The empty file indicates to the system that the automatic installation of the Junos OS image from the USB storage device is supported.

  6. (Optional) Create a text file named junos-config.conf and copy the file to the USB storage device. For example, the following file supports an automatic configuration update during the installation process:

    You can use the file also as a backup configuration file for device recovery in case of upgrade failure or if the existing configuration is accidentally deleted.