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MDS 9222i IPS configuration

ken_nguyen
Level 1
Level 1

Hi,

I'm trying to configure my 4 port IPS, and am running into some peculiar situations that I can't seem to find resolution on.

I want to dedicate 2 of the 4 ports for iSCSI and the other 2 for FCIP. I'd like to bond 2 ports to support one IP addr, but am having a hard time doing that as well. When I try to add a GE port to a channel, it gives me a port not compatible message. Could it possible that GE IPS ports cannot be added to a port channel? The Cisco guide is rather vague, as it only gives instructions on how to do it. Any insight would be helpful.

TIA.

4 Replies 4

Michael Brown
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Ken,

As far as I know, only the IPS-4 and IPS-8 line cards support ether-channel (bundling of ethernet ports into a single logical link). The GE ports on the 9222i each have their own IP asic and this prevents bundling them together. With the IPS-4 and IPS-8, each pair of ports share an asic. IE: GE 1 and 2, 3 and 4 and so on. So only ports 1 and 2, or 3 and 4 could be bundled. GE 1 and 3 could not since they do not share an asic.

Hope this helps,

Mike

Mike,

Thanks for the response.

Do you know if the IPS-4 GE ports support EtherChannel? If it does, I can't find any documentation on it.

If it is, would you mind pointing me in the right direction?

Ok, while I'm not sure if we can etherchannel the physical adjacent ports, it looks like you can port channel the fcip connections.

I haven't configured iSCSI yet, so we'll see if it works the same way.

Ken,

The IPS-4 is End of Sale, I'm not sure about the IPS-8 but it may also be End of Sale. You are correct, for FCIP redundancy, the best option is to create multiple tunnels, each using 1 GE interface, and then port-channel them together. If possible, use GE ports on different line cards so that if a line card reloads (like during an upgrade) the entire port channel will not be affected. All GE ports will flap during upgrade, they are not 'non-disruptive', but if the FCIP port channel is spread across multiple line cards, it will stay up, while the individual links flap 1 at a time during the upgrade. As for iSCSI, the best option is to use iSLB and load balance multiple incoming iSCSI connection across several GE ports. There really is no longer a need to bundle the GE ports, as the only time it was useful was for iSCSI prior to the iSLB (which is iSCSI server load balancing).

Hope this helps,

Mike

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