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Upgrading Virtual Connect (VC) transceivers from 1Gb to 10Gb SFP+

 
chuckk281
Trusted Contributor

Upgrading Virtual Connect (VC) transceivers from 1Gb to 10Gb SFP+

Question from Mateusz regarding changing out transceivers:

 

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Hi Experts,

 

One of our customers is planning transceivers upgrade. He wants to replace 1Gb SX SFP with 10Gb SFP+ SR in VC FlexFabric modules. Have you ever done it? Can you describe the upgrade procedure? Is it simple? Can we remove old 1Gb SX and just replace with the new 10Gb SFP+ SR online?

 

Thank you in advance!

 

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Reply from Robert:

 

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The upgrade procedure is straightforward.  Simple disconnect the fibre, remove the existing SFP and replace it with an SFP+ and connect the fibre again.  In general, you can do an online replacement, but there are some things to be careful over:

 

  1. Distance limitations are different for 1000BaseSX and 10GBaseSR.  Both depend on fibre type but 10GBaseSR in general supports shorter distances over the same fibre.  Be careful that the replacement interfaces are not exceeding distance limits. One way to check is step 2 below.
  2. Ensure that the VC module will support the new hardware.  If there is a spare port, I would try using the SFP+ in the spare port and linking it to the upstream device, on unconfigured ports, just to check you get connectivity (e.g. with LLDP)
  3. If you are replacing a link that is not in any link aggregation group, of course the entire link will go down.  You will lose all connectivity for the Ethernet networks in the SUS on the link, of course, but if the SUS is part of an Active/Active failover set the failover should be pretty instantaneous
  4. If you are replacing a link in an aggregation group, when you disconnect the existing SFP, the aggregation group will stay connected on the other links.  In Active/Active setup, this may cause failover to the other SUS due to its now higher bandwidth, causing a short interruption to traffic.  When you connect the new SFP+ it will form a new aggregation group with a higher bandwidth than the remaining aggregation groups, so will automatically take over the active status. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

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Any comments?