Troubleshooting guide

System Health Checks: A Diagnostics Suite
Advanced System Diagnostics and Troubleshooting Guide 53
— Offer configurable levels
— Remove the switch fabric from service for the duration of the tests
• Background packet memory scanning and mapping
— Checks all packet storage memory for defects
— Potentially maps out defective blocks
• Backplane and CPU health checks
— Checks end-to-end integrity on communication paths between the CPU and all I/O modules
— Takes automatic action when errors are detected
• Upper layer protocol validation
— Extreme Discovery Protocol (EDP) continuous polling
— Validation of TCP and other protocols
• FDB check
— Run on demand by user
— Compares existing software FDB entries with hardware forwarding tables
• Background FDB memory scanning
— Tied to the system health check configuration
— Runs in background
— Scans the FDB memory for possible defects
— Remap function marks suspect entries against future use
• Background transceiver scanning
— Tied to the system health check configuration
— Runs in background to detect potential control path faults
— Tests internal transceiver data paths
— Tests all ASICs for proper read/write operations
The Role of Memory Scanning and Memory Mapping
The memory scanning and memory mapping functions identify and attempt to correct switch fabric
checksum errors. When you are in the process of implementing the ExtremeWare diagnostics, keep in
mind that these functions are an underlying base for much of what takes place in the diagnostic tests
that make up the system health checks diagnostic suite. For more information, see
Chapter 3, “Packet
Errors and Packet Error Detection.”
NOTE
Memory scanning addresses switch fabric checksum errors detected in the packet memory area of the
switching fabric. The memory scanning and mapping features are supported only on “i” series Summit,
Alpine, and BlackDiamond switches.
The ExtremeWare memory scanning and memory mapping diagnostics are analogous to hard disk
scanning tools, which are used to detect and map out bad sectors so that the drive can remain
operational with no adverse effects on performance, capacity, or reliability. The ExtremeWare memory