Upgrade Flash Storage on Arista 7050QX-32

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larryexchange

Active Member
Dec 27, 2016
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According to official spec, Arista 7050QX-32 has 4GB RAM and up to 4GB flash storage. In the market most of the switches have 2GB flash storage. Unfortunately the one I got has only 1GB flash storage. When I called Arista support, they told me I could not upgrade the storage module by myself and they don't have the module available in the market.

However when I was running diagnostic commands I found the flash storage is a STEC USB device. So I think probably I could replace the original 1GB USB flash with standard 4GB USB drive.

Thanks @Foray , he showed me the picture of the inside of the switch. In order to double confirm the size and connector type, I also opened chassis and found it's USB DOM w/ standard 9PIN connector.
Arista DCS-7050QX-32

So I ordered an 4GB USB DOM from local market.
IMG_1251 (Custom).JPG IMG_1252 (Custom).JPG

Here is its spec.
USB-DOM-SPEC1.png USB-DOM-SPEC2.png

Swap the flash storage is pretty straightforward.
1. First, backup your EOS image, boot-config, startup-config and your configuration file.

2. Remove the upper cover. (You don't need to remove PSU.)
IMG_1243 (Custom).JPG

3. Swap the USB DOM.
IMG_1244 (Custom).JPG IMG_1255 (Custom).JPG

4. Close the cover and power it on.

5. Follow the steps in the post Roll back SONiC to EOS on Arista 7050QX-32 and recover the EOS and config.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
848
402
63
USA
ioflood.com
According to official spec, Arista 7050QX-32 has 4GB RAM and up to 4GB flash storage. In the market most of the switches have 2GB flash storage. Unfortunately the one I got has only 1GB flash storage. When I called Arista support, they told me I could not upgrade the storage module by myself and they don't have the module available in the market.

However when I was running diagnostic commands I found the flash storage is a STEC USB device. So I think probably I could replace the original 1GB USB flash with standard 4GB USB drive.

Thanks @Foray , he showed me the picture of the inside of the switch. In order to double confirm the size and connector type, I also opened chassis and found it's USB DOM w/ standard 9PIN connector.
Arista DCS-7050QX-32

So I ordered an 4GB USB DOM from local market.
View attachment 7464 View attachment 7465

Here is its spec.
View attachment 7462 View attachment 7463

Swap the flash storage is pretty straightforward.
1. First, backup your EOS image, boot-config, startup-config and your configuration file.

2. Remove the upper cover. (You don't need to remove PSU.)
View attachment 7466

3. Swap the USB DOM.
View attachment 7467 View attachment 7468

4. Close the cover and power it on.

5. Follow the steps in the post Roll back SONiC to EOS on Arista 7050QX-32 and recover the EOS and config.
Hmm, what's the benefit of additional storage? (1GB does seem pretty tight)

Any reason to get something bigger than 4gb even? Or will it not support that?
 

larryexchange

Active Member
Dec 27, 2016
86
128
33
48
Hmm, what's the benefit of additional storage? (1GB does seem pretty tight)

Any reason to get something bigger than 4gb even? Or will it not support that?
EOS image is getting larger and larger. 1GB flash storage cannot upgrade to the image later than 4.15F, whose size is around 450MB. According to the manual, switch needs to have free space w/ double size of the image file to upgrade to that image.

Another motivation is I am using SONiC on the switch. After decompression, a basic SONiC image will use around 700MB storage space. I might need more space to add more modules/functionalities in the near future.

I am not sure if Arista can support flash storage larger than 4GB. (I bet it could). If you need to more space, you may want to add SATA DOM, which is more cost-effective. Some of the Arista switches have optional 100GB SSD (SATA DOM). Normally SSD could be used to retain the more log files.
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
4,221
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Germany
Hmm, what's the benefit of additional storage? (1GB does seem pretty tight)
Support for the "generic" eos image. Like @larryexchange pointed out there are some switches with a small usb dom and require the special 2g eos iamge.
More storage > same eos image deployed on all arista switches > less complexity > cheaper in the end :D
 

zxv

The more I C, the less I see.
Sep 10, 2017
156
57
28
Just to confirm what's said above, here's some additional info about the USB DOM in my 7050QX-32.
This one appears to be 2GB.

Code:
# bash sudo fdisk -l  /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 2003 MB, 2003828736 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 970 cylinders, total 3913728 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb682d4a1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63     2943359     1471648+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2         2943360     3911039      483840   12  Compaq diagnostics
The sda1 partition is 1.5GB capacity.
Code:
# bash df -h /mnt/flash
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             1.5G  946M  489M  66% /mnt/flash
As others have mentioned, there are two copies of the OS image (.swi). In this case they are .boot-image.swi, and EOS-4.13.5F.swi, which account for 942MB out of 946MB used.

Code:
#bash ls -alh /mnt/flash
total 942M
drwxrwx--- 6 root eosadmin 4.0K Sep  7 17:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root      100 Feb  2  2000 ..
-r-xr-x--- 1 root eosadmin 471M Jan  7  2000 .boot-image.swi
drwxrwx--- 2 root eosadmin 4.0K Jan  7  2000 .extensions
-rwxrwx--- 1 root eosadmin 471M Jan  7  2000 EOS-4.13.5F.swi
-rwxrwx--- 1 root eosadmin   27 Jan  7  2000 boot-config
drwxrwx--- 2 root eosadmin 4.0K Jan 27  2000 debug
drwxrwx--- 2 root eosadmin 4.0K Sep  8 00:46 persist
drwxrwx--- 3 root eosadmin 4.0K Jan  7  2000 schedule
-rwxrwx--- 1 root eosadmin 3.4K Sep  7 17:53 startup-config
-rwxrwx--- 1 root eosadmin   13 Jan 27  2000 zerotouch-config
https://www.arista.com/assets/data/pdf/user-manual/um-eos/Chapters/Upgrades and Downgrades.pdf
on page 281 says: ... "verify that there is enough space available on the flash drive for two copies of this image, plus a recommended 240MB (if available) for diagnostic information in case of a fatal error."

Used plus free space is 946+489 = 1435MB total availabe.
Subtract the minimum allowed free space: 1435 - 240 = 1195MB.
And divide by two to get the maximum OS image size: 1195/ 2 =597MB

For the above scenario, this suggests that the maximum recommended os image (.swi) size would be approx. 597MB, which is less than the size of version 4.20.
 
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