Network Convergence System 5000 Series Routers

The Network Convergence System 5000 Series offers a high-density, small-form-factor MPLS aggregation router for metro aggregation. It is designed to economically scale large enterprise, over-the-top (OTT), and service provider Data Center networking architectures.

The Cisco NCS 5000 Series is an extension to Cisco’s routing platform portfolio enabling Service Providers and MPLS enabled data center architectures to offer elastic networks with improved business agility and simplified operations to deliver high-bandwidth mobile, video, and cloud services.

It can also operate as an extension shelf of Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers using Network Virtualization (nV) technology, consolidating multiple layers in the network and dramatically reducing operational costs.

The Cisco NCS 5000 series routers are small form factor dense aggregation systems. Powered by industry leading routing operation system, IOS-XR, the system also offers rich functions such as third party application hosting, machine-to-machine interface, telemetry and flexible package delivery.

The Cisco NCS 5000 series router is not supported in the standalone mode in IOS XR Release.7.8.1. It is only supported as a satellite to the ASR 9000 Router. For information on satellite features, see Release Notes for Cisco ASR 9000 Series Routers, IOS XR Release.7.8.1.

Release 7.8.1 Packages

This table lists the Cisco IOS XR Software feature set matrix (packages) with associated filenames.

Table 1. Release 7.8.1 Packages for Cisco NCS 5000 Series Router

Composite Package

Feature Set

Filename

Description

Cisco IOS XR IP Unicast Routing Core Bundle

ncs5k-mini-x.iso

Contains base image contents that includes:

  • Host operating system

  • System Admin boot image

  • IOS XR boot image

  • Alarm co-relation

Individually-Installable Optional Packages

Feature Set

Filename

Description

Cisco IOS XR Manageability Package

ncs5k-mgbl-3.0.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

XML, Parser, HTTP Server, Telemetry, and gRPC.

Cisco IOS XR MPLS Package

ncs5k-mpls-3.1.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

Label Distribution Protocol (LDP), MPLS forwarding , MPLS operations , Administration and maintenance (OAM), Layer3-vpn , layer-2 vpn.

Cisco IOS XR MPLS RSVP TE package

ncs5k-mpls-te-rsvp-1.1.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

Supports MPLS RSVP-TE (Resource Reservation Protocol with Traffic Engineering extensions)

Cisco IOS XR Security Package

ncs5k-k9sec-3.2.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

Support for Encryption, Decryption, and Secure Shell (SSH),

Cisco IOS XR Multicast Package

ncs5k-mcast-2.2.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

Multicast routing protocols (PIM, IGMP, Auto-rp, BSR) and infrastructure (Multicast routing information Base) , Multicast forwarding (mfwd)

Cisco IOS XR ISIS package

ncs5k-isis-2.2.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

Supports ISIS

Cisco IOS XR OSPF package

ncs5k-ospf-2.0.0.0-r781.x86_64.rpm

Supports OSPF

Caveats

There are no caveats in this release.

Upgrading Cisco IOS XR Software

Cisco IOS XR Software is installed and activated from modular packages, allowing specific features or software patches to be installed, upgraded, or downgraded without affecting unrelated processes. Software packages can be upgraded or downgraded on all supported card types, or on a single card (node).

Before starting the software upgrade, use the show install health command in the admin mode. This command validates if the statuses of all relevant parameters of the system are ready for the software upgrade without interrupting the system.


Note

  • If you use a TAR package to upgrade from a Cisco IOS XR release prior to 7.x, the output of the show install health command in admin mode displays the following error messages: 

sysadmin-vm:0_RSP0# show install health
. . .
ERROR /install_repo/gl/xr -rw-r--r--. 1 8413 floppy 3230320 Mar 14 05:45 <platform>-isis-2.2.0.0-r702.x86_64
ERROR /install_repo/gl/xr -rwxr-x---. 1 8413 165 1485781 Mar 14 06:02 <platform>-k9sec-3.1.0.0-r702.x86_64
ERROR /install_repo/gl/xr -rw-r--r--. 1 8413 floppy 345144 Mar 14 05:45 <platform>-li-1.0.0.0-r702.x86_64

You can ignore these messages and proceed with the installation operation.