The 6120xp switches seem to have a bug when you create a fiber port channel when you have a UCS fabric interconnects talking to them. If you follow the Cisco guide for the UCS, the FC Port channel will never come up and it will say that there are no members available. So, after a week of beating my head against the wall I came up with a method and so far has worked every time. I think the main issue is the ports never reset their port state until you specifically disable the ports and then bring them back up again. So here are my steps as follows.
If the instruction starts with UCS then you need to do the step on the UCS, if it starts with MDS then you need to do it on the fiber channel switches.
1) Install Gbics and get the physical connectivity going.
2) UCS Config the new ports as FC uplink ports (May already be done).
3) Open Cisco Device Manager on log into the appropriate switch.
4) MDS (Device Manager) click on interface then portchannel.
5) MDS Click Create.
6) MDS increment the ID by one from last portchannel if not done already.
7) MDS set "nontrunk, auto, force, portvsan # depending on the switch, then hit the ... to select interfaces that are in the port channel.
8) UCS create port channel do not add ports then disable it then set the appropriate vsan.
9) UCS add ports.
10) MDS while holding control.. Select all ports in the portchannel then right click one of the selected ports and hit config.
11) MDS in the popup window set the status admin on the ports to down then hit apply.
12) UCS enable port channel.
13) MDS set status admin to up on the ports in the popup window and hit apply. In a about 2 minutes the port channel should come up.
Open your favorite SSH client and connect to the MDS switch that you are working with. Log in with your username and password. Then type "term mon" to see the connection state while you are doing these steps. It will show in real time as you bring the ports up and down and show you the errors that are related to why the ports are working. The console will refresh faster than the device manager GUI.
So once you have gone through these steps you can see where the ports have come up. Once you go through these steps you can take the port channel up and down as needed. It seems that the initial build out of the port channel is the issue and the ports on the MDS never go completely down and come back up without doing these steps.
If the instruction starts with UCS then you need to do the step on the UCS, if it starts with MDS then you need to do it on the fiber channel switches.
1) Install Gbics and get the physical connectivity going.
2) UCS Config the new ports as FC uplink ports (May already be done).
3) Open Cisco Device Manager on log into the appropriate switch.
4) MDS (Device Manager) click on interface then portchannel.
5) MDS Click Create.
6) MDS increment the ID by one from last portchannel if not done already.
7) MDS set "nontrunk, auto, force, portvsan # depending on the switch, then hit the ... to select interfaces that are in the port channel.
8) UCS create port channel do not add ports then disable it then set the appropriate vsan.
9) UCS add ports.
10) MDS while holding control.. Select all ports in the portchannel then right click one of the selected ports and hit config.
11) MDS in the popup window set the status admin on the ports to down then hit apply.
12) UCS enable port channel.
13) MDS set status admin to up on the ports in the popup window and hit apply. In a about 2 minutes the port channel should come up.
Open your favorite SSH client and connect to the MDS switch that you are working with. Log in with your username and password. Then type "term mon" to see the connection state while you are doing these steps. It will show in real time as you bring the ports up and down and show you the errors that are related to why the ports are working. The console will refresh faster than the device manager GUI.
So once you have gone through these steps you can see where the ports have come up. Once you go through these steps you can take the port channel up and down as needed. It seems that the initial build out of the port channel is the issue and the ports on the MDS never go completely down and come back up without doing these steps.
by: NAMEWITHELD12 on 2012-02-15 at 07:26:47ID: 43035
I am currently attempting to connect a cisco fabic interconnect to a MDS switch and then to an emc clarion CX 4480 via FC only .
to do this I am thinking that the first step is to set up the interconnect and then in your step to is to configure the interconnect FC ports as FC uplink ports ,
I am very new to this and could use any advice you can give!