Do the new ISE 3600 series appliances support serial console ?

[llahteen]

I am getting reports that the serial console in 36XX appliances does not work.

Datasheet says that appliance has a serial connector but 36XX installation guide has removed the following section that is present in 35XX installation guide:

-- snip --

Your Cisco SNS-3515 or Cisco SNS-3595 appliance has a DCE-mode console port for connecting a console terminal to your appliance. The appliance uses a DB-9 serial connector for the console port.

The console port on the Cisco SNS-3515 or Cisco SNS-3595 appliance includes an EIA/TIA-232 asynchronous serial (DB-9) connector. This serial console connector (port) allows you to access the appliance locally by connecting a terminal—either a PC running terminal-emulation software or an ASCII terminal—to the console port.

-- snip --

If we have a terminal server in the equipment room using a serial console is more convenient that setting IP addresses in CIMC.

Could this be a bug, a (missing) feature or a user error ?

[Arne Bier · Accepted solution]

The physical console port on any UCS server does not give you direct access to the CIMC.  That would be an amazing feature I have to say! :)

The console port is wired to the main motherboard and makes itself available to the operating system, and not the CIMC.

CIMC is available via the IP-based interface methods (CIMC interface or shared on the other interfaces).

[llahteen]

I don't want to access CIMC via serial port but I would like to access ADEOS using serial port - so that I can utilise my terminal server to access ISE remotely without having to set IP address on CIMC. Setting IP on CIMC requires a monitor and a keyboard or some dhcpd tuning. Besides having RS-232C to all critical communications equipment gives me warm and fuzzy feeling. 

[llahteen · Accepted solution]

To close this thread:

To enable serial console in new 3615/3655/3695 appliances you need to disable Serial-over-LAN setting in CIMC:

demo-cimc# scope sol

demo-cimc /sol # show
Enabled Baud Rate(bps)  Com Port SOL SSH Port
------- --------------- -------- -------------
yes     115200          com0     2400
demo-cimc /sol # set enabled no
demo-cimc /sol *# commit
demo-cimc /sol # show
Enabled Baud Rate(bps)  Com Port SOL SSH Port
------- --------------- -------- -------------
no      115200          com0     2400