Upgrading IOS on Routers and switches takes an excessively long time!

I agree, and I've had less than stellar experiences upgrading multiple devices using the NCM solution.

I find it faster to manually do the upgrades using other tools that end up being more reliable.

Thanks, I appreciate your opinion on this.

This is really sad and a shame. 

Cisco has been soliciting their solution for this as well monitoring period.

I hope Solarwinds can do better real soon.
Thanks again,

Cheryl

From my experience with updating IOS code via Solarwinds I have two issues of concern and I believe both could be corrected with some new coding (I'm not a coder).

My first issue is that my edge locations vary in latency and we don't set a transfer blocksize in our standard config, so I have to test a locations capabilities first by doing a simple TFTP test file upload.  I usually start my test at 8192 and then back it down until I get a good stream and then set my up firmware upgrade template with a better blocksize, ie.:

config terminal${CRLF}ip tftp blocksize 8192${CRLF}end${CRLF}copy ${TransferProtocol}://${StorageAddress}/${NewImageName} ${NewImageSlot}${CRLF}${CRLF}dir ${NewImageSlot} ${SuccessRegEx:${NewImageName}}${CRLF}config terminal${CRLF}no ip tftp blocksize${CRLF}end${CRLF}

That alone can greatly increase the speed in which your files get uploaded and ready for the actual install.  

My second area of concern with using Solarwinds to update IOS is that if you are doing a group of systems at once; then Solarwinds will do them serially, and if one in the chain breaks, or Solarwinds thinks one fails, then it stops the update to the remaining systems in the batch.  To get around this I have to build multiple update profiles and set them to fire at staggered times.  

vonzoom 

Thank you! Appreciate your comments and experience in this. 
High Five!

Cheryl