"Unified Computing System Manager requires Oracle/Sun java runtime version 1.6"

Ever seen this annoying error message when trying to launch UCS and the firmware is a little older?:


















I sure have and it is annoying, to get around it, download java 6 (Sun's name for Java 1.6) and in your web browser, when prompted if you want to open or save, choose to open with "other" application, browse to the directory where Java 1.6 is hiding (for me it was C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.6.0_16\bin) and point it towards javaws.exe


Should be able to launch it now no troubles :)

SAN Port Channel with UCS

Hi Guys!

I don't see many people doing this particular configuration, I am not sure why i tested it for failover etc and it works great!

This config is for uplinks between your UCS 62XX series Fabric Interconnect and your Nexus (or MDS with some slight modification) Fibre channel switch, for those of you with devices not doing full FCoE yet.

Let's say you have four FC 8 Gig uplinks between your Nexus-5548-A and your UCS-6248-A, and the same again for Nexus-5548_B and UCS-6248-B.

Now normally if you configure these as uplink ports and just plug them into your Nexus 5548UP and assign the appropriate VLAN's you will be fine: UCS is smart enough that it will "pin" service profiles to particular uplinks and try and get a bit of load balancing going on, and ofcourse it offers re-pinning if anything goes wrong.

But chances are you probably etherchannel your Ethernet uplinks from your UCS 6248, why not your fibre channel?

You can do it and I am going to show you how. :)

Nexus 5548UP Configuration
Below we have the relevant Nexus 5548UP Configuration:


I have assumed you already have basic fibre channel connectivity going so you already have things like feature npiv etc and you have your VSAN setup etc


First, enable the fibre-port-channel feature:

nexus#
nexus#conf t
nexus(config)#feature fport-channel-trunk

Next we need to configure the SAN port channel first BEFORE we add the ports to it (opposite way to how we do it with ethernet but whatever :))




interface san-port-channel 100
  channel mode active
  switchport trunk mode off



We set the channel mode to auto, SAN port channel only supports on or active, active negotiates an FC port channel but on forces it to be on. Next we set the  trunking mode to be off, this might be diffirent for you if your using both npiv and trunking multiple VSAN's but for most deployments this is fine.


Next, configure the actual ports to be members of the port channel:

interface fc1/29
  switchport trunk mode off
  channel-group 100 force


interface fc1/30
  switchport trunk mode off
  channel-group 100 force



Once you have done this if your VSAN was not vsan 1 you would need to bind this interface:


vsan database
 vsan XYZ interface san-port-channel-100

You can now no shut this:

interface fc1/29
no shut
interface fc1/30
no shut

interface san-port-channel-100
no shut

Once this is done you need to configure the UCS to support this connectivity.

First, make sure you have already defined your FC uplink ports and be CAREFUL THAT YOU HAVE PLACED THEM IN THE CORRECT VSAN







next, click on the SAN tab in UCS, expand out SAN Cloud, Fabric A, and FC Port channel.


Click the add button and give your san-port-channel a name and ID, i like to make the ID match the
 san-port-channel number on my Nexus switch.

Now once your port channel is created, you need to make sure that the VSAN is assigned correctly (it should match the VSAN's that you have assigned to the FC uplink ports) and then click enable portchannel. Walla! Done!




Check the status in UCS, and use "show flogi database" to make sure your Fabric Interconnect is logging into the the SAN, it should show as coming over your new SAN port channel. Do the same for Fabric B and your done!



Interestingly here is the actual UCS config that all of this you are doing is actually generating:




interface san-port-channel 100
  channel mode active
  switchport mode NP


Here you can see it has defined a port  channel and said that the port mode is NP


interface fc1/30
  channel-group 100 force
  no shutdown


Next you can see that UCS has placed the interface into this port channel, funny that this config is very similar to the guide on configuring SAN-port-channel between a fabric switch and an NPIV switch available here ;)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/4_1/configuration/guides/cli_4_1/pc.html

If you would like to know more about NX-OS specifically, I recommend this book (i have it myself through the Safari Online subscription, which I also recommend :)

If you want to know more about UCS, I quite enjoy the following book:
Finally if your MDS skills are not up to scratch, check out:


Birthday cake from my girlfriend

Check out the birthday cake my girlfriend got me!!!

Cisco vWLC

Hi Guys!

The Cisco vWLC has been released! Rather than do my own blog post on how to set it up though, i thought i would point you to my coworkers blog, who is currently pursuing his CCIE Wireless, Please give a shout out to my friend Jeen Chew

http://jeensern.blogspot.com.au/

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