Brocade ICX Series (cheap & powerful 10gbE/40gbE switching)

[dswartz]

Is my understanding correct? You could manage to re-flash the primary partition but you cannot re-flash the secondary?
Just delete the secondary flash and it will copy from primary automatically after reboot. Takes some minutes.

enable
erase flash secondary
reload

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I flashed new FW to primary. Ran for a week ok. Copied primary to secondary. Now, both partitions are running the new FW. I did try booting from the secondary but it failed the same exact way, which I found odd, to say the least. At that point, I had no usable partitions.

BTW, I thought it was odd that you can't install FW from a flash drive, which would have solved my f-up in minutes. To be clearer: I mean can't install once you are at the 'OS>' prompt OR the bootloader prompt. Only copy I could do was from tftp. Grumble...

 

[tubs-ffm]

BTW, I thought it was odd that you can't install FW from a flash drive, which would have solved my f-up in minutes. To be clearer: I mean can't install once you are at the 'OS>' prompt OR the bootloader prompt. Only copy I could do was from tftp. Grumble...

ICX 7150 you say?
On my previous 7250-24P it was not possible. But on my ICX 7150-24P and on my ICX 7150-C12P I can flash from USB flash drive.

enable
copy disk0 flash SPR09010eufi.bin primary
reload

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Yeah... I like Mellanoxes approach, where you can have at least images downloaded on the switch, but not installed (just ready to install).

This doesn't work from the bootloader though, but that would be a great idea in case some switch manufacturer reads this

 

[Vesalius]

Well, that was NOT fun. We live in a semi-rural area. Lots of power glitches and tree limbs taking out power lines. I'd say we get 1+ hour outages once or twice a year. Long enough the UPS can't keep the switch&etc up. 08.0.92bT211 was the good release I was running. Power comes back, but no ports lit on the 7150. Console cable in and see 'OS>' prompt. Scroll back a bit and see error messages about missing directories and python3. Bizarrely primary AND secondary seemed borked. I admit not knowing the internals, but I would have thought the 2 flash partitions wouldn't be both vulnerable like this? Due to the way I set things up, it was hard to recover this. The 7150 had a 2-port LAG to the stacked switches, so of course that was down, so the tftp VM was inaccessible, and I didn't have tftp server on my windows 10 desktop. After many trials and tribulations, I managed to boot the 7150 from the old FW version, and once that was up, copy the old FW to BOTH flash partitions, reboot again, and re-enter the LAG info and I was back. Very strange indeed.

Weirdly I had something similar when my area had major power outages from an ice storm that took power out for hours, exhausted the UPS and then proceeded to flicker on and off for several more hours. Although I still had a switch that seemed to function correctly, I could neither SSH into it or do anything directly at the console. Ultimately pulling the plug and then powering back up fixed that glitch, though I was nervous and ready to reinstall on a backup switch.

 

[1vivy]

Hello,

I own the icx6150 beefing beefer beefington, and I'm trying to use my GPON ONT SFP inside of this switch. This is the Nokia G-010S-A, and it's Pin 6 is wonky. So sometimes the switch is able to see the SFP ONT, and the status will be up or down. It took me a sec to realize this is prolly the issue. Better explained in the link below:

Nokia G-010S-A Pin 6 Issue

I've soldered Pin 6 to ground in my Broadcom card to deal with this, and stuck it into my router. But I'm just wondering if there is any way to deal with this switch side? Possibly through the CLI? I do know there is a lot of hidden debug commands mentioned in the wiki, but I'm too scared to mess with them. I'm maybe interested in opening up the switch to mod it.

Any clue @fohdeesha ?

 

[fohdeesha]

Hello,

I own the icx6150 beefing beefer beefington, and I'm trying to use my GPON ONT SFP inside of this switch. This is the Nokia G-010S-A, and it's Pin 6 is wonky. So sometimes the switch is able to see the SFP ONT, and the status will be up or down. It took me a sec to realize this is prolly the issue. Better explained in the link below:

Nokia G-010S-A Pin 6 Issue

I've soldered Pin 6 to ground in my Broadcom card to deal with this, and stuck it into my router. But I'm just wondering if there is any way to deal with this switch side? Possibly through the CLI? I do know there is a lot of hidden debug commands mentioned in the wiki, but I'm too scared to mess with them. I'm maybe interested in opening up the switch to mod it.

Any clue @fohdeesha ?

what da heck is an icx6150? lol

I don't know of any low level commands that completely bypass physical SFP presence, but from the page you linked it looks like you should just solder pin 6 to ground on the optic itself to solve it

 

[1vivy]

what da heck is an icx6150? lol

I don't know of any low level commands that completely bypass physical SFP presence, but from the page you linked it looks like you should just solder pin 6 to ground on the optic itself to solve it

icx6610 wups. Worth a shot! I think I'll try to order a spare one, and open it up. The funny thing is it's been up for more than 2 hours now, while I went to get groceries. But I don't trust it. For now, I think I'll put it back into my router. Opening up the switch is overkill thinking to myself.

Thanks

 

[NateR]

Hello all,

I've got an ICX6450-24p I've had in use for a year or so now. I've noticed that when I mess around with stuff in my rack, sometimes I'll lose the SFP ports (no status lights), which I use for uplink to the upstream switch, requiring a reboot of the switch. I believe I've finally figured out what is causing it - I disconnected a shielded network cable the other day, and happened to touch the metal shielding on the connector and shocked it with ESD (it's pretty dry here, and I typically touch the rack before anything else to discharge it, but either forgot to or just moving around built up a charge). The SFP ports went dark when this happened. Rebooted, and they came back up.

Any ideas on how to keep this from repeatedly happening?

Also, has anyone found a good alternative to OEM rack-mount ears? Mine came with a couple, but as I didn't have a rack at the time, I stupidly removed them and put them "where I will remember them..." well, after much searching, I have failed to find them.

Thanks

 

[dswartz]

Yeah... I like Mellanoxes approach, where you can have at least images downloaded on the switch, but not installed (just ready to install).

This doesn't work from the bootloader though, but that would be a great idea in case some switch manufacturer reads this

You beat me to it. Yeah, you need to be up and running to do that, but both flash partitions were borked. "Can't get there from here". What I ended up doing:

1. Login to 7250 stack with my iphone and delete the LAG.
2. Unplug one of the LAG cables at my end to avoid STP issues.
3. Move the other cable to the mgmt port on the 7150.
4. Boot from tftp on the VM specifying the old FW.
5. Copy from tftp on the VM with old FW to primary.
6. Reboot from primary.
7. Set up minimal config so I can http in and finish config (there wasn't much unlike the 7250 stack).
8. copy from primary flash to secondary flash.
9. Login to 7250 stack and reinstate the LAG.
10. Restore cables to original positions.
11. (minimize future hassles) Install tftpd-hpa on a 1U rackmount linux host by my desktop that is a secondary backup target.
12. Bitch-slap myself for getting into this cluster-f*ck to begin with LOL.

 

[dswartz]

Hello all,

I've got an ICX6450-24p I've had in use for a year or so now. I've noticed that when I mess around with stuff in my rack, sometimes I'll lose the SFP ports (no status lights), which I use for uplink to the upstream switch, requiring a reboot of the switch. I believe I've finally figured out what is causing it - I disconnected a shielded network cable the other day, and happened to touch the metal shielding on the connector and shocked it with ESD (it's pretty dry here, and I typically touch the rack before anything else to discharge it, but either forgot to or just moving around built up a charge). The SFP ports went dark when this happened. Rebooted, and they came back up.

Any ideas on how to keep this from repeatedly happening?

Also, has anyone found a good alternative to OEM rack-mount ears? Mine came with a couple, but as I didn't have a rack at the time, I stupidly removed them and put them "where I will remember them..." well, after much searching, I have failed to find them.

Thanks

Wish I could help. My grumble about rackmount stuff: the nuts everyone provides have the same outside square size to fit the rack posts, but I've found that when you order a set of nuts and bolts, the nuts and bolts are not always the exact right size between different vendors. e.g. sometimes a bolt from vendor A is a bit too big to fit in the hole of a nut from vendor B. Other times, it's a bit too small, and doesn't engage the threads (but just slides right in, which is obviously useless).

 

[dswartz]

Weirdly I had something similar when my area had major power outages from an ice storm that took power out for hours, exhausted the UPS and then proceeded to flicker on and off for several more hours. Although I still had a switch that seemed to function correctly, I could neither SSH into it or do anything directly at the console. Ultimately pulling the plug and then powering back up fixed that glitch, though I was nervous and ready to reinstall on a backup switch.

I had something very similar happen!

 

[dswartz]

what da heck is an icx6150? lol

I don't know of any low level commands that completely bypass physical SFP presence, but from the page you linked it looks like you should just solder pin 6 to ground on the optic itself to solve it

the icx6150 is the tofu version of a beefy switch

 

[Shad]

What I'd like to do next is replace one of the switches with the PoE version, ICX6540-48P. The documentation and video guides say that as long as the replacement stack member is the same model and has been erased, it will be adopted and the config applied. "It just works".

Does anybody know if that is also the case when replacing non-PoE with PoE version of otherwise the exact same model?

Any thoughts on this one? I'm going to attempt it tomorrow now I have a replacement switch sorted out with updated firmware, a license, and empty config.

 

[tangofan]

Just wanted to drop in and say a special "thank you" to @fohdeesha Got my used ICX7150-24p up and running using your instructions a bit over 2 years ago. Just upgraded firmware to 8095h and everything went as smooth as butter.

A bit of beer money is heading your way. Thanks again for all the good work you do here.

 

[fohdeesha]

Just wanted to drop in and say a special "thank you" to @fohdeesha Got my used ICX7150-24p up and running using your instructions a bit over 2 years ago. Just upgraded firmware to 8095h and everything went as smooth as butter.

A bit of beer money is heading your way. Thanks again for all the good work you do here.

Thank you for the donation!

 

[Shad]

What I'd like to do next is replace one of the switches with the PoE version, ICX6540-48P. The documentation and video guides say that as long as the replacement stack member is the same model and has been erased, it will be adopted and the config applied. "It just works".

Does anybody know if that is also the case when replacing non-PoE with PoE version of otherwise the exact same model?

In case anyone finds this in the future, I played it safe. Having exported the config it was clear it wasn't going to work plug-n-play because the POE module has a different name so the stack part of the config wouldn't have matched up. I modified the config with the correct module name and restored it to the new POE switch and it was happy. Then I erased the other switch for the stack and it hooked it up, and the config automatically copied over as expected. All sorted

 

[kapone]

Thank you for the donation!

...

 

[NablaSquaredG]

I've lent an ICX6610 to a friend, config is stock (no VLANs, nothing)

He keeps telling me that the ICX6610 doesn't allow DHCP to passthrough? I have no idea, I've never had any issue like that. He's using the 4x10G port with a breakout cable and one of the 10G ports on the front. Other traffic seems to go through.

I suppose it's a Layer 8 error on his side...

 

[MikeSpears]

Having some issues with the 40G to 4x 10G breakout cable I bought (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LAR98YK and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U8LY4Y4). When I attach the cable to one of the breakout ports and the other end to my servers, either only 1 or 2 will link up, or none will link. Is this potentially a bad cable or user error?

 

[DerTom]

Hi!

I've got myself the Brocade ICX-6450-48P and think that I do have lost myself during configuration... At least I'm missing something and ask for your help.

What am I trying to achieve:
I do have configured four gateways and four vlans at a pfSense-firewall. I specified a specific gateway for each vlan using the firewall-rules. To get the inter-vlan-routing off the firewall I got the ICX-6450. As much as I understand the documentation or what I have read I have to configure one port with all four 'pfSense-vlans' being tagged and being connected to the pfSense-box. Next is to create four new 'ICX-vlans' for my network, create the router-interface for each vlan and specify the gateway for each 'ICX-vlan' by using the default-gateway option (IP of the created tagged vlan-port).

Right here I'm stuck...

The ICX is running the 'latest' router-firmware:




I do have created a vlan 72 for testing and the 've 72' interface:



There is no option to define a 'default-gateway' for the router-interface:



or the vlan itself:



Is it, that the 6450 isn't having this option as the firmware is 'too old'
or
my configuration is just wrong
or
I'm missing something else?

If there is someone kind enough to help me out, every hint is kindly appreciated.

Best wishes from Germany!

Tom