BLADEOS™ Release Notes 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter® Version 5.1 Part Number: BMD00098, December 2009 2350 Mission College Blvd. Suite 600 Santa Clara, CA 95054 www.bladenetwork.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Copyright © 2009 BLADE Network Technologies, Inc., 2350 Mission College Blvd. Suite 600, Santa Clara, California, 95054, USA. All rights reserved. Reference number: BMD00098 This document is protected by copyright and distributed under licenses restricting its use, copying, distribution, and decompilation. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization of BLADE Network Technologies, Inc.
Release Notes The 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module (GbESM) is one of up to four GbESMs that can be installed in the IBM BladeCenter chassis. These release notes provide the latest information regarding BLADEOS 5.1 for the 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module. This supplement modifies information found in the complete documentation: BLADEOS 5.1 Application Guide for the 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter BLADEOS 5.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Hardware Support BLADEOS 5.1 software is supported only on the 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module (Figure 1) for IBM BladeCenter. The GbESM is a high performance Layer 2-3 embedded network switch that features tight integration with IBM BladeCenter management modules.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes The GbESM contains three 10 Gigabit Small Form-factor, Pluggable (SFP+) slots. The 10Gb SFP+ slots can accept 1Gb copper transceivers, 10Gb optical transceivers, or Direct Attach Cables (DAC). Note – If a DAC is not programmed to meet MSA specifications (including length identifier), the switch disables the port and generates a syslog message indicating that the DAC is not approved. The GbESM does not disable the SFP+ ports when using MSA-compliant DAC cables.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Updating the Switch Software Image The switch software image is the executable code running on the GbESM. A version of the image ships with the switch, and comes pre-installed on the device. As new versions of the image are released, you can upgrade the software running on your switch. To get the latest version of software available for your GbESM, go to: http://www.ibm.com/systems/support From the BLADEOS CLI, use the /boot/cur command to determine the current software version.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Using the BLADEOS CLI 1. At the Boot Options# prompt, enter: Boot Options# gtimg 2. Enter the name of the switch software to be replaced: Enter name of switch software image to be replaced ["image1"/"image2"/"boot"]: 3. Enter the hostname or IP address of the FTP or TFTP server. Enter hostname or IP address of FTP/TFTP server: 4. Enter the name of the new software file on the server.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Using the ISCLI 1. In Privileged EXEC mode, enter the following command: Router# copy {tftp|ftp} {image1|image2|boot-image} 2. Enter the hostname or IP address of the FTP or TFTP server. Address or name of remote host: 3. Enter the name of the new software file on the server. Source file name: The exact form of the name will vary by server. However, the file location is normally relative to the FTP or TFTP directory (usually tftpboot). 4.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Using the BBI You can use the Browser-Based Interface to load software onto the GbESM. The software image to load can reside in one of the following locations: FTP server TFTP server Local computer After you log onto the BBI, perform the following steps to load a software image: 1. Click the Configure context tab in the toolbar. 2. In the Navigation Window, select System > Config/Image Control. The Switch Image and Configuration Management page appears. 3.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes New and Updated Features BLADEOS 5.1 for 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module (GbESM) has been updated to include new and enhanced features in support of server and peer switch discovery, as well as failure detection at the link layer. In addition, there are enhancements to existing implementations in the areas of dynamic routing protocols, configuration and reporting. The list of features below summarizes the updated features.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Uni-Directional Link Discovery Protocol BLADEOS 5.1 now supports the Uni-Directional Link Discovery (UDLD) protocol, compliant with RFC 5171. UDLD operates at Layer 2 in conjunction with existing IEEE 802.3 Layer 1 fault detection mechanisms. It is used between peer devices to detect and disable unidirectional Ethernet links caused, for instance, by mis-wired cable strands, interface malfunctions, or media converter faults. UDLD is configured on a per-port basis.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Internal Loopback Interface BLADEOS 5.1 now supports up to five loopback interfaces. A loopback interface is an interface which is assigned an IP address, but is not associated with any particular physical port. The loopback interface is thus always available for higher layer protocols to use and advertise to the general network, regardless of which specific ports are in operation.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Hot Links BLADEOS 5.1 now supports Hot Links. Hot Links provides basic link redundancy with fast recovery for network topologies that require Spanning Tree to be turned off. Hot Links allows up to five triggers, each of which consists of a pair of layer 2 interfaces that may contain either an individual port or trunk. One interface is the Master, and the other is a Backup.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes LACP Trunk Enhancements BLADEOS 5.1 now supports up to eight links in each LACP Link Aggregation Group (LAG). Layer 2 Failover Enhancements BLADEOS 5.1 includes multiple enhancements to the Layer 2 Failover feature to support advanced NIC teaming: In addition to the automatic monitoring triggers for trunk links, the switch software now supports new manual monitoring triggers.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes ISL Layer 2 Protocol Enhancements BLADEOS 5.1 now supports additional Layer 2 protocols on Inter-Switch Link (ISL) ports: VRRP STP RSTP/MSTP 802.1Q VLAN Tagging 802.1p QoS/CoS 802.1X Port-Based Access Control ACLs STP Fast Uplink Bridge Priority With BLADEOS 5.1, the Fast Uplink Convergence bridge priority has been set to 65535.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Chassis Internal Network BLADEOS 5.1 now supports BladeCenter Chassis Internal Network (CIN). CIN provides internal connectivity between blade server ports and the internal Advanced Management Module (AMM) port. This allows blade server users to access the AMM via CLI, web-browser, or SNMP session, and allows the AMM to use services on the blades, such as LDAP, SMTP, DNS, and NTP. BC-S Chassis Support BLADEOS 5.1 supports the BladeCenter BC-S chassis.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Port link information (/info/link) for switches installed in bay 3 and bay 4: Alias ---INT1 INT2 INT3 INT4 INT5 INT6 MGT1 EXT1 EXT2 ...
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Port information (/info/port) for switches installed in bay 3 and bay 4: Alias Port Tag Fast Lrn Fld PVID NAME ----- ---- --- ---- --- --- ---- -------------INT1 1 y n e e 1 INT1 INT2 2 y n e e 1 INT2 INT3 3 y n e e 1 INT3 INT4 4 y n e e 1 INT4 INT5 5 y n e e 1 INT5 INT6 6 y n e e 1 INT6 MGT1 15 y n e e 4095*MGT1 EXT1 17 n n e e 1 EXT1 EXT2 18 n n e e 1 EXT2 ... VLAN(s) -------------------1 4095 1 4095 1 4095 1 4095 1 4095 1 4095 4095 1 1 Other Features BLADEOS 5.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Supplemental Information This section provides additional information about configuring and operating the GbESM and BLADEOS. Management Module The “Fast POST=Disabled/Enabled” inside the IBM management module Web interface “I/O Module Admin Power/Restart” does not apply to the GbESM. Solution: To boot with Fast or Extended POST, go to the “I/O Module Admin/Power/Restart” window.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Management Module/GbESM Connectivity Currently, the IBM management module is designed to provide one-way control of the GbESM. As a result, the GbESM may lose connectivity to the management module via the management port under the following conditions: If new IP attributes are pushed from the management module to the GbESM while the IP Routing table is full, the new attributes will not be applied.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Secure Management Network The following GbESM attributes are reserved to provide secure management access to and from the IBM management module: Internal management— MGT1 (port 15) and MGT2 (port 16) VLAN 4095 IP interface 128 Gateway 4 STG 128 For more information about remotely managing the GbESM through the external ports, see “Accessing the Switch” in the BLADEOS 5.1 Application Guide.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Spanning Tree Configuration Tips To ensure proper operation with switches that use Cisco Per VLAN Spanning Tree (PVST+), you must do one of the following: Create a separate Spanning Tree Group for each VLAN. Manually add all associated VLANs into a single Spanning Tree Group. When using Layer 2 Trunk Failover, disable Spanning Tree Protocol on external ports.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Known issues The following are known issues for BLADEOS 5.1 on the 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module. Access Control Lists When an Access Control List (ACL) is installed on two different ports, only one statistics counter will be available. The GbESM does not support two different statistics counter for one ACL installed on two different ports. The ACL filters for TCP/UDP work properly only on packets that do not have IP options. When configuring an ACL to set 802.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Link Aggregation Control Protocol If a static trunk on a GbESM is connected to another GbESM with LACP configured (but no active LACP trunk), the /info/l2/trunk command might erroneously report the static trunk as forwarding. Since LACP trunks use LACPDU packet to maintain trunking with the partner, there is a possibility for those packets to be dropped from an extremely busy trunk.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes RADIUS with SSHv2 With RADIUS turned on, users might see a duplicate login prompt for SSHv2 clients, if the RADIUS server is too slow to respond or if the RADIUS server is not available. In this case, users must re-type the username and password to login. RIP MIBs Due to backward-compatibility issues, two Routing Information Protocol (RIP) MIBs are available in BLADEOS: ripCfg and rip2Cfg. Use the rip2Cfg MIB to configure RIPv1 and RIPv2 through SNMP.
BLADE OS 5.1 Release Notes Strong Password Expiration If you configure a Strong Password with automatic expiration, the password might not expire if the system date and time is not configured first. Use of a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server resolves this issue. Solution: When you configure a strong password with automatic expiration, first configure the system time and date for the switch.
