Brocade VDX 6740

A couple of weeks ago I start the process of upgrading our current virtual environment to 10GB ethernet.  These switches will not be used for a converged infrastructure. We currently have a 8GB Fiber Channel storage backbone.  Next year we are upgrading the hardware controllers cards in the hosts to 16GB.

The current version on the switches were 4.0.1.  I could not get the switches to talk back to my CISCO 3750 Routers. After talking with a couple of Network Engineers that have these running in their environment, I need to patch my NOS to 4.1 or higher.  After the patch everything came to life.

Here is a brief staging document for the Brocade #VCD 6740

The first important step. Plug it in!

Please wait 3 minutes.

After the yellow lights are gone you should be ready to start.

Plug in the console cable.

Open your favorite SSH tool. (Putty, SecureCRT, etc.)

Change the default password(s)

Enter the configure terminal command

Enter the username command followed by the account name and password

At the prompt, enter the new password. Then press enter.

Make sure you change the admin and user account passwords.

Setup a static IP address

Log into the console with the admin user

Configure the management interface

 

Configure the IP address

Switch(config-Management-1/0)# ip address x.x.x.x/24

Then copy running-config startup-config

IP address has been set

Check your firmware version

Make sure you do not have the same issue I had.  Check the firmware version.

Enter show version

 

As you can see I have version 4.0.1.

 

Manual Firmware Download

You need to have a FTP server setup.  I have FileZilla installed on the Network laptop.  This laptop has a serial connection and software used to configure a network switch.

Enter firmware download

At the Reboot system after download? [y/n]: prompt, you can enter n if you want to reboot the system manually after downloading the firmware.

At the Do Auto-Commit after Reboot [y/n]: prompt, enter n if you want to commit the firmware manually after downloading the firmware.

switch# firmware download interactive

Server name or IP address: X.X.X.C

File name: /

Protocol (ftp, scp): ftp

User: admin

Password: **********

Reboot system after download? [y/n]:n

Do Auto-Commit after Reboot? [y/n]:n

System sanity check passed.

Do you want to continue? [y/n]:y

(output truncated)

 

After download completes, enter the show version all-partitions command to confirm that the primary partitions of the switch contain the new firmware.

If you entered n after the Reboot system after download? prompt, enter the reload command to reboot the switch. If you entered y after the prompt, the switch will reboot automatically. The switch performs a reboot and comes up with the new firmware. Your current CLI

session will automatically disconnect.

Log back into the switch. If you entered n in the Do Auto-Commit after Reboot? prompt, enter the firmware commit command to commit the new firmware. If you entered y after the prompt, the switch will commit the firmware automatically upon booting up.

switch# firmware commit

Validating primary partition…

 

Doing firmwarecommit now.

Please wait …

Replicating kernel image

……………

FirmwareCommit completes successfully.

Enter the show version command with the all-partitions option. Both partitions on the switch or on the modules should contain the new firmware.

The new Version has been loaded.  You are ready to start setting up the new switch.