AIS AI2524 Tasks, Startup Task List, Partition Flash Memory Using Dual Flash Bank, Benefits

AI2524 Router Card User’s Manual

Perform Startup The startup tasks in this section are optional.

Tasks

Startup Task List

You can perform these optional startup tasks:

zPartition Flash Memory Using Dual Flash Bank

zUse Flash Load Helper to Upgrade Software on Run-from-Flash Systems

Partition Flash Memory Using Dual Flash Bank

Dual Flash bank allows you to partition banks of Flash memory into separate, logical devices so that the router can hold and maintain two different software images. (A bank is a set of four chips.) No down- time is required: you can write software into Flash memory while run- ning software in another bank of Flash memory.

Systems that Support Dual Flash Bank

To use dual Flash bank, you must have at least two banks of Flash memory. The minimum partition size is the size of a bank.

Dual Flash bank is supported on low-end systems that have at least two banks of Flash memory, including systems that support a single SIMM that has two banks of Flash memory.

Benefits

Partitioning Flash memory provides these benefits:
z For any system, partitioning—rather than having one logical	Flash
memory device—provides a cleaner way of managing differ	ent

files in Flash memory, especially if the Flash memory size is large.

zFor systems that execute code out of Flash memory, partitioning allows you to download a new image into the file system in one Flash memory bank while an image is being executed from the file system in the other bank. The download is simple and causes no network disruption or downtime. After the download is complete, you can switch over to the new image at a convenient time.

zOne system can hold two different images, one image acting as backup for the other. Therefore, if a downloaded image fails to boot for some reason, the earlier running, good image is still avail- able. Each bank is treated as a separate device.

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