When I got Riverbed Stellhead 250H for Lab environment, first thing I checked was version of RiOS on device. It turns out that device was outdated and had RiOS 5.5.6, while current version is 7.0.3.

Next thing I did was jump on Riverbed Support web page to identify how to upgrade my test Riverbed, as there is always certain path of RiOS versions you have to go through to get to recent one.

Riverbed software upgrade information came up with all versions of RiOS I need to go through to get to latest version.

Based on Software Upgrade Information following RiOS image files will be required required for this upgrade:

  • image_rbt_sh_6_0_4_n156_6.img
  • image_rbt_sh_6_1_3a_n77_11.img
  • image_rbt_sh_6_5_3b_n130_10.img
  • image_rbt_sh_7_0_3a_n223_32.img
Upgrade path and RiOS image files you require depend on version of the RiOS from and to which you upgrade your Riverbed Steelhead appliance.

Now it’s time to logon to Riverbed Steelhead.

When logon will be successful main screen of Riverbed will show up.

Then from menu at the top Configure / Maintenance / Software Upgrade

On Software Upgrade screen I chose to upgrade RiOS from URL. It can be also done from local computer on which you are connected to Riverbed appliance.

Once you click Install Upgrade button image will be downloaded by Riverbed appliance and blue progress bar will show indicating progress of the upgrade.

Progress indicator might look different than on presented screenshots as it depends which version of RiOS is currently installed on appliance.

Once RiOS image is uploaded to Riverbed appliance you will see information about Booted version of operating system (currently in use) and Next Boot Version (which should be version just uploaded.

In addition to that at the bottom of Software Upgrade window you can see Software Version History (which shows one by one all versions of RiOS which were applied to that Riverbed device).

Now to boot from new operating system go to Configure / Maintenance / Reboot/Shutdown

On Reboot/Shutdown screen click Reboot.

Riverbed will log you off and will reboot. About 2-3 minutes later you can logon back to device.

On main appliance screen after logon you can see that current version of the RiOS is the one uploaded in previous steps.

To get to recent version of RiOS software upgrade steps have to be repeated with all versions of software indicated by Riverbed in Software Upgrade Information.
Remember that same upgrade process can be used with other Riverbed Steelhead appliances. I just demonstrated it based on 250H as that equipment was available for my experiments.

Once all steps completed you can enjoy recent version of RiOS on Riverbed.