Brocade Ports Persistently disabled

[Kites BM]

Hi,

Please let me know the reason for newly configured brocade switch - why the some ports are Persistently disabled?

is this bcoz of limited license.?
if yes let me know the type of license need to be installed?(viz. fabric license,Performance Monitor license,etc)

[Uwe Zessin]

What switch model are you talking about?
A switch where only a subset of ports are licensed or a Bladesystem switch?

[Kites BM]

It is c7000 Blade Chassis system and few ports out of 24 ports (total) is licensed.

[Uwe Zessin]

Well, then you have answered your question. "Persistently disabled" is just a misleading text - move a blade with a FC mezz card to one of the slots and I am sure the text will change.

[Kites BM]

Please elaborate on moving FC mezz card...

I'm remotely connected to this switch.

[Uwe Zessin]

I suggested that you move a blade with FC connectivity to find out if the message changes.

[kris rombauts]

Hi Krishna,

what Uwe wants you to do is to remove a existing blade (which uses a fibre port) and put it in another server bay, so you will then see that the port that was showing as "permanently disabled" before will become active and show as a F-port ONLINE i.e.

These switches come with a POD (port on demand) feature and every time you add a new blade or a new connection to a fibre port (i.e. the uplinks) one port of the POD pool will get used untill you reached your max port license which is 12 or 24(max), depends on what model of switch AE370A (12 port license) or AE372A (24 port license)and license you bought.

Just be aware that if you move blades around and add/remove/move uplink connections that each time it enables that new port (if it was never used before) and it takes another port from the license pool, so you can run out of licensed ports but only using 8 at the same time i.e.
There is a command to release the unused ports again and add them back to the pool of unused ports, check also the help
The example below shows you one lciense is still held but the port is offline.
You can also disable this feature.

admin> licenseport
Usage: licenseport --release portnum | --reserve portnum | --show
licenseport --method dynamic|static


admin> licenseport -show
24 ports are available in this switch
Full POD license is installed
Dynamic POD method is in use
24 port assignments are provisioned for use in this switch:
12 port assignments are provisioned by the base switch license
12 port assignments are provisioned by a full POD license
12 ports are assigned to installed licenses:
12 ports are assigned to the base switch license
0 ports are assigned to the full POD license
Ports assigned to the base switch license:
1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13*, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
Ports assigned to the full POD license:
None
Ports not assigned to a license:
0, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 22, 23

12 license reservations are still available for use by unassigned ports
1 license assignment is held by an offline port (indicated by *)




portcfgpersistentdisable Persistently disable a port
portcfgpersistentenable Enable a persistently disabled port


HTH
Kris