Undocumented Sanity

In a previous post, I mentioned problems we were having with one of our Nexus 5000 switches. During all of the Nexus 1000v issues, it was throwing these messages continually: 2011 Mar 29 05:22:13 N5K-2 %FWM-2-STM_LEARNING_RE_ENABLE: Re enabling dynamic learning on all interfaces 2011 Mar 29 05:22:20 N5K-2 %FWM-2-STM_LOOP_DETECT: Loops detected in the network among ports Eth1/10 and Eth1/2 vlan 801 - Disabling dynamic learn notifications for 180 seconds I couldn't tell if it was actually affecting anything, since VLAN 801 was being used as a FCoE VLAN. Looking at MAC addresses bound to VLAN 801 would reveal one MAC address in particular that would move around: N5K-2(config)# sho mac add vlan 801 Legend: * - primary entry, G - Gateway MAC, (R) - Routed MAC, O - Overlay MAC age - seconds since last seen,+ - primary entry using vPC Peer-Link VLAN MAC Address Type age Secure NTFY Ports ---------+-----------------+--------+---------+------+----+-----------...

I previously commented about issues we had with one of the pass through I/O modules with our M1000e chassis. After opening a case with support, they had us do some things such as remove the blades, remove the modules, etc, and it started working. Still not a particularly promising sign. After building out our ESX servers and trying to put VMs on them, we had all kinds of unusual issues with trying to run FCoE Active/Active on them. We were getting errors such as: Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.582 cpu0:4284)WARNING: LinNet: netdev_watchdog: NETDEV WATCHDOG: vmnic2: transmit timed out Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.854 cpu3:4260)NMP: nmp_DeviceUpdatePathStates: Activated path "NULL" for NMP device "naa.60060060060060060060060060060060". Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmkernel: 0:00:39:45.854 cpu4:4258)NMP: nmp_DeviceUpdatePathStates: Activated path "NULL" for NMP device "naa.60060060060060060060060060060060". Apr 23 15:02:04 host vmker...

After writing my previous posts about my love/hate relationship with Nexus 1000v, I received a phone call from the Cisco Nexus 1000v Product Manager. I can only guess that he tracked me down because I posted a Bug ID in there. Regardless, he was very interested in making sure that my issues were resolved, and he pulled some resources together to help me out. I needed the help because my Secondary VSM had started into a reboot loop. Even deploying a fresh VSM would do the same thing after the Config Sync happened. While pulling some debugs off of the busted VSM, somehow 6 of our VEMs (Hosts) unregistered with the Primary VSM. My TAC Engineer was out of the office, but an Engineer from the 1000v Escalation Team got on the phone with me, and started digging around. What he found was this: a 3750 switch, home to several Development ESX Hosts, using a port-channel connected via vPC to our Nexus 7000 switches. The only traffic allowed across this port-channel was the Control/Packet/Managemen...

We recently installed a Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis with a couple of blades in it. Since we wanted to run FCoE to the blade, our only option (at least that was available at the time) was the 10 Gig pass-through blade. After hooking everything up and installing ESX, we found that only one of the 10 Gig links would come up for each host - not a promising start. We also had a score of annoying little problems across the CMC management interface and the KVM interface. So far, I'm not exceedingly impressed by Dell's blade offering.