Switches

Currently two switches are used in the server room.

  1. Brocade VDX 6740
  2. Dell S4048-ON

Brocade VDX 6740

The Brocade switch is controlled by the RBG and builds the backbone of the server infrastructure, connecting every server with each other trough a 10Gb/s link.
The switch has an uplink to the rest of the informatics building network and is controlled trough vlans. VLAN 83 is our chair network (131.159.24.0/23) and VLAN 133 (10.0.0.0/8) is the internal server network. Each interface can be assigned to a specific or multiple VLANs.
There are only 24 licenses, so only 24 servers can be connected with 10Gb to the switch.

Shift License between ports
24 licenses are available 

#see which licenses are assigend
device# show dpod

#release or reserve licenses, interface needs to be shutdown first
device# configure terminal
device(config)# interface 21/0/17
device(tengigabit 21/0/17)# shutdown
device(tengigabit 21/0/17)# exit
device(config)# dpod 21/0/17 release
device(config)# dpod 21/0/18 reserve
device(config)# interface 21/0/18
device(tengigabit 21/0/18)# no shutdown

Dell S4048-ON

Service Tag: H1K2Y42

The Dell switch is used in the Emulation Cluster, connecting the 12 servers with two interfaces each (10Gb/s). The switch has Dell Networking OS 9 running (FTOS10) and is controlled from one Emulations Server (Controller: emu02-cm). The Controller is directly connected to the management port of the switch.

To connect to the switch use the following approach:

Firmware Upgrade

The latest firmware can be downloaded from the force10 network. To get a user account a form needs to be filled out on the website with the service tag of the switch and other information. Download the latest firmware of the Switch model (S4048-ON not S4048T-ON !!). The file is something like “FTOS-<Version>.bin” you don't need the ONIE installer file. Check the md5sum of the downloaded file to make sure it didn't get corrupted while downloading. Then transfer the file to emu02-cm.in.tum.de to the home folder of i11 /home/i11.

  • Log in to the switch via telnet telnet 10.20.0.2
  • Execute the following commands 
    #copy firmware file to the switch
show file-systems
dir flash:
show running-config
copy scp://10.20.0.1/FTOS-SK-9.11.0.0P2.bin flash://FTOS-SK-9.11.0.0P2.bin
dir flash:

#check os versions and boot system partition
show os-version
show os-version flash://FTOS-SK-9.11.0.0P2.bin
show boot system stack-unit 1

#safe the config files to the emu02 server
copy startup-config scp://10.20.0.1/startup_config_old.conf
copy running-config startup-config
copy startup-config scp://10.20.0.1/starup_config.conf

#actual upgrade of the boot partition
#choose the partition A: / B: that is not currently used
#in case of firmware failure or unexpected behavior a rollback is easily possible
upgrade system flash://FTOS-SK-9.11.0.0P2.bin B:
show boot system stack-unit 1

#choose relevant boot partition
configure
boot system stack-unit 1 primary system B:
exit

#write config to memory for restart and restart
write memory
reload

show os-version

After the restart you should have a perfectly working Switch with the same configuration as before but with a newer firmware version. Be aware that the reload command takes down all the network Ports temporarily!