Living in Silicon Valley can be very exciting, but it has some challenges too. Traffic is certainly one of those challenges, and it’s a very common occurrence for most of us. Regardless of where you live in the world, you’ve likely experienced the inconvenience of traffic congestion.
In order to avoid traffic, we usually turn to one common solution. Simply turn on your favorite GPS map application and find the most optimized route around traffic congestion. These applications provide us with real-time traffic reports and visualization across the GRID and in every city.
The same analogy can be applied to Cisco’s industry-unique solution: SAN Analytics for Cisco MDS 9000 series switches.
Cisco MDS 9718 is supported only from Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 7.3(0)D1(1) and later releases. Cisco MDS 9718 does not support Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 8.3(1). Cisco MDS 9396S is supported only from Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 6.2(13) and later releases. Cisco MDS 9148T switch is supported only from Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 8.3(1) and later. Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) is a modern network management application that brings your MDS SAN fabric to life. DCNM provides capabilities from Day Zero to Day two operations – initial switch configuration, deployment, troubleshooting, comprehensive SAN Analytics visualization, and much more on a single dashboard. Cisco SAN Analytics running on the Cisco MDS 32G platform provides real-time, complete visibility across the fabric comprising of SCSI / NVMe flows. Let’s look at this very briefly and understand how it functions in Cisco’s MDS 32G switches. The Configuring Cisco MDS 9000 Series Switches (DCMDS) v3.1 course shows you how to implement, manage, and troubleshoot Cisco® MDS 9000 Series Switches, to build highly available, scalable storage networks. Through expert instruction and extensive hands-on practice, you will learn how to deploy and use capabilities such as Virtual Storage Area. Prepare one Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis with two installed UCS IOM 2208XP, each UCS IOM is connected to one Cisco UCS 6428UP. Now, configure two ports on each Cisco UCS 6428UP as an FC-uplink port, which is connected to Cisco MDS Fabric by Fibre Channel cables, this Cisco MDS is an 8 GB SAN Switch.
The Need for SAN Visibility
When beginning a performance review of our storage environment, we need complete visibility. Storage management solutions provide valuable insights from the fabric storage and server infrastructure perspective. But what about congestion that occurs outside of the server or storage environment? It could be a misbehaving application, a corrupt piece of hardware in the pathway, or a saturated storage port. It could even be a VM causing heavy utilization on a server port or an application with bursty behavior caused by a large number of small IOPS. It can literally be anything, right? This is precisely where Cisco SAN Analytics comes to the rescue.
Like a trusted GPS, Cisco SAN Analytics running on the Cisco MDS 32G platform provides real-time, complete visibility across the fabric comprising of SCSI/NVMe flows. Let’s look at this very briefly and understand how it functions in Cisco’s MDS 32G switches.
How It Works
The Cisco SAN Analytics solution runs on the onboard NPU (Network Processing Unit) located on the Cisco MDS 32G platform. It runs on a dedicated network processor which carry out the analytics operation. Hence, turning on this feature is non-disruptive to any normal switching functionality. The dedicated NPU (Network Processor Unit) residing on each 32G module or switch will analyze the Fibre Channel protocol header information (SCSI or NVMe). It will then export this metadata from the switches using streaming telemetry via the management port. This metadata can be streamed into the DCNM (Data Center Network Manager) or to any 3rd party tool that has the ability to digest gRPC formatted data.
The unique features of SAN Analytics
- Accessibility: Turn ON or OFF anytime, without disrupting normal switching traffic through the port.
- Ease of configuration or administration: It is not rocket science! It’s a simple 4-step process using DCNM or a 2-line CLI command to enable it.
- Flexibility: It can analyze SCSI or NVMe flows, or both flows together.
- Security: Security does not interfere with the data payload, so there is no concern with compromising the data at any point.
- Simplicity: How about those extra cabling or ports? Not necessary, as this is an on-switch function requiring no extra cables or ports.
- Scalability: It can be turned on across selected / all of the switch ports to monitor up to 40,000 flows.
Now, if there are any issues in the fabric (or even to improve the performance of the fabric), you will know where to send the ambulance!
This is how Cisco SAN Analytics is defining the standards for storage network analytics: simple, scalable, and secure.
Take SAN Analytics for a Test Drive
Why not try it out? Both Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) and the SAN Analytics software products can be deployed and utilized with full product capabilities for up to 120 days. This will allow customers to test drive these amazing technologies in their environments to get a feel for their capabilities before they purchase.
Simply grab any Cisco MDS 32G FC switch/module, put it in any fabric (Cisco or non-Cisco), and discover issues long before they can become a real problem. The configuration guide can be found here.
Additional Resources
Cisco Storage Area Networking blog series:
SAN Insights how-to video series:
Other related blogs, with engineering flavor:
In this blog, we will discuss what is port-channel in the Cisco MDS switch. Along with that, we will also talk about the F port Channel, what are the types of port-channel, Modes of port-channel.
Finally, we will see the commands for creating an F port channel between a Cisco MDS core switch and an NPV switch.
Port Channel is a logical aggregation of multiple FC ports that increases total bandwidth, provides load balancing, and link redundancy. A Port-channel can have ports from two different modules in the same SAN switch.
You cannot create a port-channel from two different switches. This is more clear in the below diagram.
The above diagram has two switch switch1 and switch2. There are three port-channels between the switches PortChannelA, PortChannelB, and PortChannelC.
PortChannelA contains an aggregation of ports from the same module of both switches. Meantime, PortChannelB has ports from two different modules.
Now in the case of PortChannelC, there are three ports from each switch. In switch1 two ports are from the same module but the third port is from a different module. In switch2 all three ports are from the same module.
The conclusion here is that you can select various port combinations in the same switch but you cannot select ports from different switches.
What are the Types Of Port Channel
There are two types of port-channel E port-channel and F port channel. E Port Channel is a logical combination of Multiple E ports. E Ports connect two SAN Switches for ISL connectivity.
If we enable trunking then the port-channel then it becomes a TE port channel and the ISL link becomes EISL.
F Port Channel is a logical Combination of Multiple F ports that connects from one Switch (F) to NPV switch (NP) or FI interconnect.
Modes Of Port Channel In Cisco MDS Switch
There are two types of Port Channel Mode one is ON and the other is ACTIVE. Both modes have a different purpose. Below are some basic differences between them.
How To Configure F Port Channel In Cisco MDS Switch
This section will discuss how to create an F Port Channel between the Cisco MDS switch and NPV switch. Before we start we have to check a few things which are very important for port-channel configuration.
The first thing we need to make sure that Physical connection is present between switches.
Configuration of individual ports and port channel must be the same. Make sure configuration like speed, mode, rate mode, port VSAN, trunking mode and allowed VSAN for individual port and port-channel are the same.
Steps and Commands To Create F Port Channel
Step 1. Enable F port trunking and channel protocol
Switch(config)# feature fport-channel-trunk
Step 2. Enable NPIV on the MDS core switch:
Switch(config)# feature npiv
Step 3 Create PortChannel and Add FC Ports
This command creates a port-channel with name 1.
Switch(config)# interface port-channel 1
These commands ensure that the port-channel type is F port-channel
Switch(config-if)# switchport mode F
Below commands sets channel mode active. F port channel only supports ACTIVE port-channel mode hence it is important to set the channel mode as ACTIVE.
Switch(config-if)# channel mode active
Below Command disable the trunking in Port Channel
Switch(config-if)# switchport trunk mode off
The below command sets the rate mode of port-channel to shared.
Switch(config-if)# switchport rate-mode shared
Switch(config-if)# exit
Till now we have completed creating an F port-channel in Core Switch whose number is 1. Now in the below steps, we will add ports to Port Channel 1.
Make a note that the configuration for Port Channel 1 and the interfaces must be the same.
Step 4. Configure the PortChannel member interfaces
Below two commands select FC ports fc2/1 , fc2/2 and fc2/3 as port-channel members and then disable them
Switch(config)# interface fc2/1-3
Switch(config-if)# shut
Below four commands will set the port mode as F, disables the trunking, set the speed as 4000 and the rate mode as shared.
switch(config-if)# switchport mode F
switch(config-if)# switchport trunk mode off
switch(config-if)# switchport speed 4000
switch(config-if)# switchport rate-mode shared
Below commands is for adding the interfaces to the port-channel. In this case ports fc2/1, fc2/2 and fc2/3 are added to Port Channel 1. The second command will disable all ports.
switch(config-if)# channel-group 1
switch(config-if)# no shut
So far we have completed the port-channel configuration in Core switch. Now we have to repeat the same steps to configure F Port-channel an NPV switch.
Step 5. Create the PortChannel In NPV switch
eswitch(config)# interface port-channel 1
eswitch(config-if)# switchport mode NP
eswitch(config-if)# switchport rate-mode shared
Cisco Mds 9000 Simulator
Now we have to configure the individual ports and add them To Port Channel 1 in NPV switch.
Step 6. Configure the PortChannel interfaces In NPV switch
eswitch(config)# interface fc2/1-3
eswitch(config-if)# shut
The above command will shut down all the ports that fc2/1, fc2/2, and fc2/3.
eswitch(config-if)# switchport mode NP
eswitch(config-if)# switchport speed 4000
eswitch(config-if)# switchport rate-mode shared
eswitch(config-if)# switchport trunk mode off
eswitch(config-if)# channel-group 1
Finally, you can enable all ports using the below command.
eswitch(config-if)# no shut
The final step is to disable and enable all interfaces from both Core switch and NPV switch.
Step 7. Set admin State of PortChannel Ports of NPIV and NPV switch to ON
Disable and enables interfaces in Core switch.
Switch(config)# interface fc1/1-3
Switch(config-if)# shut
Switch(config-if)# no shut
Disable and enables interfaces in NPV Switch.
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eswitch(config)# interface fc2/1-3
eswitch(config-if)# shut
Last, enable all the ports.
eswitch(config-if)# no shut
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This completes the F port-channel configuration between the Cisco MDS and an NPV switch. I hope you have like this. Watch below YouTube for more details. Feel free comment on this topic and Subscribe For more such videos