Last week I was on a Greenfield deployment of 9300/9200 switches. While stacking I received “incompatible Chassis” message. Show Switch shows current state as “v-mismatch”

Even though all switches where on the same version I was unable to stack due to V-Missmatch. Finally I found an interesting thing on my switch stack. Two switches where showing Install and one showing Bundle.

Todays blogs is all about Bundle and Install Mode

Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series Switches have two modes of operation, Install mode and Bundle mode.

The Install mode is the recommended mode for booting a switch.

Install Mode

The Install mode uses a package-provisioning file named packages.conf in order to boot a switch. In addition, there are a number of .pkg files in the flash drive. We recommend that you do not alter the packages.conf and .pkg files unless directed by a Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) engineer.

Bundle Mode

The Bundle mode uses monolithic Cisco IOS images to boot a switch. The Bundle mode consumes more memory than the Install mode because the packages are extracted from the bundle and copied to RAM.

Verifying the Mode of Operation

We can check the mode using Show Version Command

The below screenshot was taken from a 9300 switch where boot is Bundle Mode.

The below screenshot was taken from a 9200 switch where boot is Install Mode.

In the next blog I will share details how to install iOS.