Cisco MDS: Fabric is already locked
When you encounter a fabric lock, because you accidentally left the GUI or CLI without committing the changes, you can try the following to clear the lock and retry to apply your changes: run ‘show cfs...
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Maximum distances using fiber cable types OM1/OM2/OM3/OM4/OS1
What are the maximum distances using different fiber grades? This post is meant as an easy reference for when you plan to switch to higher FC or Ethernet speeds or when you’re connecting distant...
View ArticleCisco MDS NX-OS zoning on the CLI
The Cisco Fabric Manager or the newer DCNM can be great for creating a limited number of zones and aliases, but when the number of zones exceeds 10 or 20 or so, creating, cloning and editing these can...
View ArticleSetting Daylight Savings Time on a Cisco MDS switch
I recently ran into a log time difference at a customer’s site so I want to repeat my blog from last year (Configuring the timezone and NTP). It’s slightly different on Cisco LAN / Routing equipment,...
View ArticleAdding or replacing a Cisco SAN switch in an IVR topology
If you have multiple datacenters or a multi tenant fibre channel environment and you’re using Cisco FC switches, it’s a best practice to use VSANs to separate the configurations of each location /...
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Cisco Smart zoning – part II: examples
Smart zoning examples In my smart zoning post from last February I already presented the way to get started with Cisco smart zoning. I initially planned to give a more detailed calculation on how much...
View ArticleThe EMC / Dell merger: my tears and thoughts
It’s been a few weeks now since Mr Dell, Silver Lake and MSD Partners announced they want to take over EMC and with that become the world’s largest privately held IT company. For me I relived the whole...
View ArticleCisco MDS “fabric merge” and “switch add” prerequisites
Prerequisites when adding a new SAN switch to an existing SAN fabric When using enhanced device aliases, make sure you enable this on the new switch as well: device-alias mode enhanced device-alias...
View ArticleHow to add new members to an existing Cisco smart zone
DCNM is down. I love the tool, but the downside is that you forget how to use the CLI. I faced downtime of our DCNM appliance and was forced to use the CLI instead. No big deal actually, but I still...
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Using putty instead of the default ssh from Cisco device manager
How do I configure Cisco DCNM so Putty starts when I select to go to the command line of a switch? If you right click on a switch in the overview section in DCNM, you can go to the command line of that...
View ArticleChanging the time of Cisco DCNM
You’ve just deployed the DCNM appliance and you notice that the reports are displayed in the PDT timezone format. How do you change this into your own timezone? For this you can log on to the command...
View ArticleCisco MDS CLI commands when checking for defects or signal degradation
Checking the environment of a switch: show environment temp = what are the temperatures of the intake(s) and outlet(s) show environment power = are the PSUs still working fine? show environment fan =...
View ArticleHow to upgrade a Cisco MDS SAN switch
After a few years of not having had to perform switch upgrades, I had to perform a few firmware upgrades on MDS switches. I decided to write down the steps I had to take: First make sure you have a...
View ArticleTroubleshooting error-disabled issues between a Cisco UCS fabric interconnect...
When connecting a high speed cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect (like the 6454) to Cisco MDS Fibre Channel switches, you might encounter error-disabled ports causing the port-channel to go down....
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Making cisco MDS switches log to an external (syslog) server
Configuring a Cisco SAN switch to have it send logging to an external syslog server by using the GUI is quite easy to do: Floow the steps as I walk through DM: click “logs”, then “syslog”, then “setup”...
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