San Port Channels & Order Of Operation - (Storage Series Part-4)

Sample SAN Port Channel Config
==============================

interface san-port-channel 1 >> In Nexus # in MDS >> interface port-channel
 channel mode active
 switchport mode E
 swithcport trunk allowed vsan 1
 switchport trunk allowed vsan add 10
 switchport speed 4000


!
int x/x
 channel-group 1 > Static port channel
 channel-group 1 foce > To add any link later into functional San Port Channel
 channel-mode active > To enable port channel protocol



Verification
============


sh port-channel summary

sh san-port-channel summary

sh port-channel internal info interface po1

sh interface san-port-channel 1 trunk vsan


=============================================================================


This is order of operations for E/TE:

1. Go to the MDS physical interfaces, shut them down
2. Need to ensure the individual ports are dedicated - 'switchport rate mode dedicated' 
    otherwise will error out on port-channel configuration. Can also configure 
    'switchport mode e'
3. Add ports to port-channel - 'channel-group X'
4. Go to the port-channel, apply the configuration ('switchport mode e' and 
    'switchport rate mode dedicated'.
5. If required, restrict the port-channel with the only the necessary VSANs
6. Add the port-channel to the VSAN database (optional - again depends on requirements)
7. No shut the port-channel and then physical ports

* Make use of 'show interface fc x/y' and verify config - look at: Admin port mode, 
    trunk mode, port mode, port vsan, VSANs allowed (if trunking).
* Ensure that these settings match on both sides (either MDS to N5K or UCS)

For F/TF port-channel, steps that are slightly different from above:

1. Enable MDS features (such as npiv / fport-channel-trunk - if making a TF port-channel)
2. For F ports, can leave in either shared or dedicated mode. Additionally, configure the 
    physical interfaces as 'switchport mode f', otherwise will error out as generally 
    they default to FX ports
3. Instead of 'switchport mode e' on the port-channel, obviously make it an F port

If link fails to come up and using NPV-NPiV, useful to make use of 'show npv status', 
 will also identify if you've forgotten to enable NPiV upstream, etc.

HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE