How to upgrade a Cisco MDS SAN switch

Posted by on December 15, 2020 No comments
Cisco MDS

After a few years of not having had to perform switch upgrades, I had to perform a few firmware upgrades on MDS switches. I decided to write down the steps I had to take:

  • First make sure you have a reachable ftp server somewhere and write down its ip address
  • Log on to the Cisco MDS SAN switch you need to upgrade
  • Make sure the bootflash: has enough available space to hold the 2 new files

# dir bootflash:

4096 Feb 23 14:58:04 2020 lost+found/
26049024 Feb 10 12:57:55 2020 m9100-s5ek9-kickstart-mz.8.3.2.bin
121121564 Feb 10 12:56:47 2020 m9100-s5ek9-mz.8.3.2.bin

Usage for bootflash://sup-local
463962112 bytes used
2894815232 bytes free
3358777344 bytes total

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I’m in Tech Field Day 22!

Posted by on December 8, 2020 1 comment

From Wednesday December 9 to Friday December 11 I’ll be a delegate in Tech Field Day 22. I attended once before, in San Jose in 2014, for Storage Field Day 5 and now, 6 years later I’m in #TFD22! Time sure flies! This week we’ll be talking to some interesting companies once again.

These are the presenting companies and the delegates that will be attending:

Wednesday Thursday Friday
Early Presenting Companies Commvault
Quantum		 Veeam
Red Hat		 VMware
Delegate Panel Arjan Timmerman, Bart Heungens, Bruno Wollmann, Jasper Bongertz, Kori Younger, Lino Telera, Max Mortillaro, Michael Davis, Ned Bellavance, Phillip Sellers, Rob Koper, Steven Cortez
Late Presenting Companies Cisco
MemVerge		 Riverbed Illumio
Delegate Panel Al Rasheed, Ben Mason, Chris Hildebrandt, Chris Maki, David Chapa, Erik Ableson, Jody Lemoine, Justin Warren, Matt Callaway, Matthew Leib, Nico Stein, Robert Novak, Scott Bollinger

 

It’s going to be an interesting few days and I’m very much looking forward to a renewed participation in this TFD event!

 

For more detailed information, please visit the TechField Day website.

How to get a Brocade switch configured for Dell EMC SRS (ESRS)

Posted by on May 21, 2019 No comments

Perform a

esrsconfig -show

to check whether the settings are saved to te switch. If the switch shows this output:

fcsw-01:admin> esrsconfig –show

ESRS SERVER AND PRODUCT CONFIGURATION
=======================================

ESRS Server IP: 10.20.30.40
ESRS Server Port: 9443
Product Serial Number: BRCCCD1946R04G
Product Model Number: SWITCH-BROCADE-B-GW
Status: Device is not Managed by ESRS

ESRS is not yet active.

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How to match an Windows (HyperV) disk to a SAN attached disk using the wwn

Posted by on May 10, 2019 2 comments
Hard Drive

Where do I find the wwn of a disk in Windows / HyperV? That’s the question.

There are a number of identifiers to find out which LUN is which disk, but the only undeniably unique number to find out which disk is which LUN is by using the globally unique wwn number of a LUN. The question is: “where can I find the wwn of a disk in HyperV?”

The LUN number, as assigned by the storage array can be found by using diskpart:

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How to list the naa-numbers of LUNs and VMware VMFSs on a Dell EMC Unity system

Posted by on May 10, 2019 No comments
EMC Unity

In the Unity the naa numbers (wwn) are listed in the “block” section, but not in the VMware section. If you view the LUNs from the host perspective, the naa numbers are visible, but in the list of LUNs  would have been easier. You can list all details from LUNs and datastores on the CLI by using the uemcli commands:

uemcli -d 10.11.12.13 -u Local\admin -p [password] /stor/prov/luns/lun show -detail > unity.txt
uemcli -d 10.11.12.13 -u Local\admin -p [password] /stor/prov/vmware/vmfs show -detail >> unity.txt

Now simply open the unity.txt file and voila: there they are!