ACI Fabric does not initialise

[roysm]

Hi

I am setting up our ACI fabric for the first time and nothing seems to work. The cluster does not initialise and when I run the APIC gui, I do not see any switches in fabric membership. I have gone through various troubleshooting documents, searched the forums and I'm now pulling my hair out with this after spending the last week on it. 

I have 3 controllers with 2 leaf switches and 2 spine switches. All cabled as per cisco documents. The switches can see LLDP neighbors but the controllers do not.

I have run "eraseconfig setup" on the controllers and "setup-clean-config.sh" on the switches several times with no success. I have access to the controllers via OOB management and they can ping each other but the cluster does not come up. Any ideas?

Also, can I break the fabric down to minimum component? Can I connect 1 APIC to 1 Leaf and nothing else? If I create a cluster of 1, should it see the switch? 

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks

Roy

[dpita]

Hello

Could you please send the "show lldp neighbor" output from the switch that has the APICs connected to it?

if it looks like a blank name with a MAC on a port thats wrong, we should see the APIC name that you gave it during the APIC setup script. It might be that LLDP is enabled on the VIC when it should not be. 

[roysm]

I'm unable to get the output just now, as I'm not in the office. However, I do know that the output only shows the MAC address on the port with blank names. I did think it looked wrong but was not sure.

When you refer to the VIC, do you mean the VIC on the controllers? Should LLDP not be enabled?

[dpita · Accepted solution]

that is correct, the VIC on the APIC controller which connects to the leafs. it should not have LLDP enabled as the APIC Operating System must be the one to generate and send the LLDP frame instead of the VIC itself. its a simple remedy, please reference this article for the procedure. 

https://supportforums.cisco.com/sites/default/files/attachments/document/files/apic-vic-lldp-fn.pdf

In summary:

Bug Tracking ID: CSCva28506 Procedure

1. SSH into to the Integrated Management Controller (IMC) IP with user 'admin'.

2. Type scope chassis to change the scope to manage the chassis.

3. Type show adapter to verify the PCI slot number where the VIC is installed.

4. Type scope adapter N, where N is the slot identified in Step 3.

5. Type show detail to confirm whether LLDP is enabled.

6. Type set lldp disabled.

7. Type commit to save the changes.

8. Power cycle the server and confirm the updated setting.

[roysm]

That has solved it now. LLDP was indeed enabled on the VIC. I have now disabled it and the fabric discovery has kicked in and I now see all nodes, leaves and spines. 

Thank you very much for the help. 

[dpita]

Glad to hear that, Happy to help!