$127 Cisco ENCS5412/K9 Xeon-D 1557 (12 core), 32G ram
- Thread starter RobstarUSA
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Curious, you are running this instead of the NFVIS firmware? Standard install from USB or ??I have been playing with one of these for a few weeks, I was actually working on documenting some of my findings but haven't gotten far enough to post something yetbut I can answer some questions
It runs ESXi 8
Yep I thought the same thing. I'm guessing the XL710 does something(s) that the X552 does not, they do have a custom firmware for it.
It seems to be something inside their modified I350 driver but I haven't really looked at exactly what it's doing yet. I did try to switch it with ethtool and cli in ESXi (localcli network nic set -p tp -n vmnic0) but neither did anything. I did submit an opensource request hoping to get some of their modifications, but no joy yet.
Yep, I don't have access to a recent NFVIS image but mine came with an image of NFVIS 3.8 or so. "Fragile" is the best word I could use to describe my NFVIS experience but ESXi has been solid. I am running from a USB stick right now, so I can pass the SATA controller through to TrueNAS but I'll probably move ESXi to the internal 200GB SATA drive then use RDM for a couple SATA SSDs I have in there.
The switch module is actually configured through IP (specifically 169.254.1.0)
There is a dedicated VLAN 2363 used by the host to communicate with the switch for configuration. It is a full managed switch with LACP, VLANs, POE, QinQ, QoS, etc lots of features, all controlled through a terribly inefficient (but easy to understand) XML interface.
Switch is bootstrapped by writing the bootloader and software image through an MMIO range on the host and sending an interrupt. This is handled by a special driver "mv_pciboot" and an app called "remote_boot_app" I do this on my unit by using PCIPassThru on ESXi to a VM that performs this process once per HW power-on. I haven't found a way to reset the switch once it's up and running yet (for instance if you botch the configuration and lose access to it via IP)
As for the LEDs, port personalities, and other HW settings I haven't gotten that far yet.
Nice! I guess Cisco didn't want to bother with the sideband interface and went straight for in-band. This probably also means the payload on the Cisco OS contains all the options/strings/operations that would be exposed once the configuration is loaded into the switch.
What's strange about that switch chip is that the spreadsheet does mention a programmable core, but nothing about it being a fully managed switch that operates stand-alone.
Almost bought one of these, then i realized it was a doorstop and managed to cancel.
Don't understand why it would have 1G instead of 10G.
Don't understand why it would have 1G instead of 10G.
Some default passwords for the ENCS 5400 are "password" and "Admin123#", sans quotes of course. The default worked on mine.
The ENCS5400s are older units and were replaced with the Catalyst 8200s. I was about to say that the 8200s support 10G, but I figured I'd better check the data sheet before I said something wrong, and sure enough, the 8200s only support 1G connections as well, but DOES support a 2.5Gbps NIM. At the edge, one generally doesn't need much more than 2.5Gbps anyway.... or if you do, you're using a dedicated platform, not one of these things.