ucs to brocade portCfgFillword

[Dragomir]

I am looking into this docment about the portCfgFillword 

in ucsm under this doc

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-b-series-blade-servers/whitepaper_C07-730016.pdf

I do not see the fill pattern box under any of my FC interfaces. Is this specific to the version of ucsm?

[Walter Dey]

Which version of UCS are you using ?

This document referes to

Cisco UCS Manager 2.1.2a

(2) Cisco UCS 6248UP 48-Port Fabric Interconnects

(2) Cisco UCS 2208XP I/O modules

(1) Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis

(5) Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server with Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1240 modular LAN on motherboard (mLOM)

Sorry paste a screen shot doesn't seem to work. But I checked it with 2.2.1b, and it works there.

In that case, it is really a version issue !

[Dragomir]

I am on 2.1(1a) 

[Dragomir]

So do I need to configure portfillword on the ucs side? 

on my brocade FC 8G switch ports, Fill Word is all at 0

[Walter Dey]

Root Cause Details

The T11 fiber committee changed the FC-PI-3 standard for 8 Gb attachment on February 4, 2008. This change uses the ARB(FF) primitive signal in place of IDLE as a fill word to maintain link synchronization. During link initialization, 6 IDLE frames are sent before sending ARB(FF) at port state LR3. Slower link speeds only use the IDLE fill word and do not have this issue.

Best practice guideline for 8G FC platforms.

For Brocade 8G platforms running FOS v6.3.1 or higher, configuring the fill word to mode 3 typically enables

the port to use the right combination of Fibre Channel primitives to fully interoperate with the attached end

1. device. Once set to mode 3, user intervention is no longer needed to configure the right primitives to enable

the link between the Brocade 8G switch port and the end device.

If a device is known to require mode 2 (IDLE/ARB) then configuring mode 2 on the 8G switch port will activate

the link sooner. If mode 3 is used in this environment, then the port will first attempt mode 1 then eventually

settle to mode 2 which will cause a delay in initializing the port.

If a device requires IDLE/IDLE combination for link initialization then one needs to set the needed port to mode

0 using portcfgfillword CLI.

Please see http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/html_product_manuals/FOS_CMDREF_720/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm#href=commands_a_z.portCfgFillword.html&single=true

[Dragomir]

ok thanks but for ucsm 2.1(1a) is the default fill pattern 

idle or arbff?

Do i need to change anything on the ucsm side?

[Walter Dey]

The default setting on UCS is Arbff

Change the Brocade portcfgfillword mode to mode 2, -idle-arbff to match the Cisco UCS configuration:

Syntax: portCfgFillword [slot/]port, mode

This only applies to Brocade 8G switsches.

[Dragomir]

will it affect the host/vms making this change on the brocade? or do i need to schedule some downtime?

[Walter Dey]

portCfgFillword [slot/]port, mode 

is a per port command; changing the value will be disruptive (on this port), the link is reintialized, and any flogi over this link has to be done again, which of course happens automatically.

If your setup is all dual homed, and fc multipathing working, you could do it online, per fabric, without a maintenance window.

If paranoia is high, schedule a maintenance window

[Dragomir]

we have a redundant fabric. but I remember having issues when one of my Fabric interconnects was rebooted. while I only lost one ping or so to the vm I was checking and the mac address failed over to the other FI, I had a bunch of storage errors afterwards. 

storage errors in the ESXi seems to have been fixed after a host reboot. 

have you seen this problem before when rebooting a redundant fabric interconnect? 

[Walter Dey]

FI reboot should only be necessary during a firmware update (and autoinstall infrastructure is the preferred method).

If teaming and multipathing is done properly, there shouldn't be a problem.

of course, if there are 1000+ garp messages, that have to be sent, it takes some time (we talk seconds or worst case minutes); and therefore you could see ping loss.

However, any OS should tolerate that !

What I wrote about changing the fill word on Brocade, doesn't require a FI reboot, nor a Brocade reboot, it's a simple restart of the link.

[JAdams159]

I tried to set a port to use mode 2 today on a Brocade 6510 and the switch resond with "Command not supported".

The code on the switch is 7.2.0a.

Is this still a requirement for a connection to UCS?

[Walter Dey]

The Brocade 16-Gbps platform (Condor 3 ASIC used in DCX 8510 and 65xx Fibre Channel switches) does not support the portCfgFillword command, as this platform automatically detects and sets the correct Fibre Channel fill pattern.