Upgrade Planning
Plan network platform upgrades from real release notes and CVE data. Your AI writes the plan, the MOP, and the change control.
Plan software upgrades for CUCM, IOS-XE, IOS-XR, NX-OS, PAN-OS, FortiOS, Junos, ISE, ASA, and WLC/Catalyst 9800. Damira pulls the release notes, known bugs, and security advisories for your exact versions. Your AI turns them into a structured upgrade plan, then the MOP and change control if you want them.
Prerequisites
- Tier: Starter or above
- Damira plugin installed in Cursor, Claude Code, or Claude Desktop (Install)
How It Works
1. Tell your AI what you're upgrading
Name the product, current version, target version, and your environment. If something is missing, your AI asks for it before doing any research.
2. Damira gathers the evidence
Before forming any opinion, the upgrade skill pulls real vendor data:
- Release notes for the target version: known bugs and caveats, and the supported upgrade path
- Security advisories: CVEs fixed or introduced in the target version
For unusual platform or version pairs where the searches come back thin, Damira's upgrade assessment fills the gaps. Your AI labels anything it couldn't confirm as unverified.
If a lookup fails, your AI says so and stops. It doesn't guess its way to a plan that reads as verified.
3. Your AI writes the plan
The plan is markdown in your editor, with tables where they help:
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Upgrade path | Direct, or the stepping-stone releases you need |
| Prerequisites | Hardware, disk space, backups, licenses, compatibility |
| Security advisories | CVEs the upgrade fixes or introduces |
| Known bugs | Caveats from the release notes, with bug IDs where available |
| Pre- and post-checks | Exact commands to capture state before and verify after |
| Risk level | Low / medium / high, with the reasoning |
| Maintenance window | A realistic duration for your device count |
| Rollback | Specific steps and the criteria that trigger them |
4. MOP and change control (optional)
Ask for the MOP and your AI writes it from the same evidence, following the CCIE/ITIL template: every step with expected output, rollback with trigger criteria. Ask for a change control and you get the RFC fields, risk matrix, and CAB checklist. In a project set up with /damira:init, both are saved to documents/. See Documents.
Examples
A Typical Session
- You: "Plan a CUCM upgrade from 12.5 SU7 to 15"
- Your AI: asks about cluster size, phone count, and the window
- You: "1 publisher, 4 subscribers, 500 phones, Saturday 2am, roll back if registration drops below 90%"
- Your AI: calls Damira for release notes and advisories, then writes the plan: path, prerequisites, known bugs, checks, risk, window, rollback
- You: "Write the MOP and the change control"
- Your AI: writes both into
documents/, grounded in the same evidence
Tips
- Put exact versions in your first message. "17.6.5 to 17.9.5" gets far better release-note matches than "17.6 to 17.9".
- Describe the environment (HA pairs, cluster roles, device count). It drives the window estimate and the rollback plan.
- Narrow the scope when you need to: "just the cert changes, skip the HA stuff".
- Treat anything marked UNVERIFIED as a question for the vendor before the window, not a fact.
- Upgrading from one platform to another (CUCM to Webex Calling, on-prem to cloud) is a migration, not an upgrade. Use Research for that.
- Upgrade went in and something broke? That's a Troubleshooting job.
Related
- Documents: MOPs and change controls
- Research: deep research for complex upgrades and migrations
- Troubleshooting: diagnosing faults after an upgrade