Posts Tagged ES460

Changing SNMP Community Strings

Posted by Michael McNamara in EthernetRtngSwitch, EthernetSwitch, Nortel on October 20, 2009

In this day and age it’s not a very good idea to leave the default SNMP community strings configured in any network electronics. The general default configuration uses public for read-only and private for read-write, these defaults apply to the Nortel Ethernet Switch and the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch.

You can certainly do this from Nortel’s Java Device Manager, however, you need to be careful that you don’t saw off the branch you’re standing on when you change the SNMP community string. It’s best to configure the SNMP community strings from the CLI interface to avoid any potential issues.

Here are the CLI commands to configure the SNMP community strings on the ERS 8600 and 1600 switch. In the example below we’ll set the read-only string to open and the read-write string to lock.

ERS-8610:5# config snmp-v3 community commname first new-commname open
ERS-8610:5# config snmp-v3 community commname second new-commname lock

Here are the CLI commands to configure the SNMP community strings on the ERS 4500, ERS 5500 and ES460/470 switches. In the example below we’ll set the read-only string to open and the read-write string to lock.

5520-48T-PWR (config)# snmp-server community open ro
5520-48T-PWR (config)# snmp-server community lock rw

Cheers!

ERS4500, ERS5500, ERS8600, ES460, ES470, SNMP

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Nortel ES 460/470 Software 3.7.4 Released

Posted by Michael McNamara in EthernetSwitch, Nortel on October 5, 2009

Nortel has released software 3.7.4 for the Ethernet Switch 460 and Ethernet Switch 470. You’ll probably recall that Nortel pulled the 3.7.3 software release in May 2009 after several software memory leaks were discovered.

I should point out that you can’t just load 3.7.4 software if you are running software older than 3.5.4. You must upgrade the software in steps. Here’s the different versions that you need to step through; 2.x to 2.5 to 3.0 to 3.2.1 to 3.5.4 to 3.7.4.

Also of interest in the release notes is a comment regarding VLACP;

VLACP operation has been changed to match implementation on ERS modular and other stackable platforms with the latest software releases. A link for which VLACP is configured will remain in a blocked state until partnership is correctly formed with the VLACP partner (Q01799355).

I’m not sure what difference they are referring to… the wording makes it sound as though VLACP would initial start in forwarding mode and would only block the port once the timeout and retries had reached the configured threshold. I might need to dig a little deeper just out of curiosity.

You can find the release notes here.

ES460, ES470, SOFTWARE RELEASE

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Nortel ES 460/470 Software 3.7.3 Pulled

Posted by Michael McNamara in BusinessEthrntSwitch, Nortel on May 23, 2009

Nortel has pulled software release 3.7.3 for their Ethernet Switch 460/470s from their website due to a potential memory leak. I’ve included a few details of the bulletin below;

Background:
A memory leak condition that in some cases has been shown to impact the functionality of the switch has been identified in software release 3.7.3 for the Ethernet Switch 470. This memory leak condition can result in a loss of CLI access and may result in degradation of network operation. This issue has been observed at 2 customer sites and as a result Nortel
has taken the proactive measure to remove the image from the Nortel support portal. The issue is tracked under CRQ02014086

Analysis:
The issue is due to memory leak. Nortel is currently investigating the issue, but no root cause has yet been determined. Investigations are on going and a replacement code will be posted as soon as a resolution is available. The symptom of the issue may include the following: Unable to access CLI from the Menu Interface or very slow CLI response. Additionally the switch may exhibit connectivity problems from Device Manager (JDM). As the condition progresses the switch may become unmanageable which could result in stack instability. This stack instability could then lead to reduced functionality and disruption to network traffic. To recover the switch from the memory leak condition a reboot needs to be perfomed. To determine if your switch is impacted, if you monitor the memory usage of the switch you will notice that the available free memory continues to decrease. Memory usage can be monitored from the CLI using the ‘mem-show’ command. On affected networks the free-blocks displayed by the ’show-mem’ command will continue to decrease the longer the switch
is up.

ES470#mem-show
status bytes blocks avg block max block
——- ——— ——– ———- ———-
current
free 4786688 147 32562 4743452 <<< number will keep decreasing
alloc 3086928 7348 420 -
cumulative
alloc 9979152 30147 331 -

You may also observce the following repeated messages on the local console (serial port) as additional indicators of the issue:

0×1e65734 (tLLDP): memPartAlloc: block too big – 1522 in partition 0×177e510.
0×1e65734 (tLLDP): memPartAlloc: block too big – 1522 in partition 0×177e510.
0×1e65734 (tLLDP): memPartAlloc: block too big – 1522 in partition 0×177e510.

You can find the entire bulletin here.

Cheers!

ES460, ES470, Nortel, SOFTWARE RELEASE

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Reload command on Nortel Switches

Posted by Michael McNamara in EthernetRtngSwitch, EthernetSwitch, Nortel on January 18, 2009

In today’s demanding business environments a lot of changes need to be made remotely and sometimes even the best laid plans go south. Thankfully Nortel offers the “reload” command in their Ethernet Switch and Ethernet Routing Switch series. I don’t believe the command is available for the 1600 or 8600 series. For those folks that are familiar with Cisco routers this command is identical although the syntax is different. If your making changes that could hang the switch or otherwise leave it improperly configured the reload command will automatically restart the switch after a specified interval has passed. If your configuration changes are successful you can cancel the reload command. If you somehow get disconnected from the switch you only need to wait until the switch reloads the original configuration.

ERS5520-PWR#reload ?
cancel           Cancel a previous scheduled reload
force            Do not ask for confirmation
minutes-to-wait  Minutes to wait before reboot
<cr>

Cheers!

ERS4500, ERS5500, ES460, ES470, RELOAD

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