Cisco 6500 WS-SUP720-3BXL version 15 SY RAM crash

[snmpguy500]

Hi,

We were testing upgrading a WS-SUP720-3BXL to version 15.

When we generate a bunch of fake routes > 730,000 the router crashes:

May 15 08:48:42 EDT: %SYS-2-MALLOCFAIL: Memory allocation of 10000 bytes failed from 0x431D3230, alignment 0
Pool: Processor Free: 421128 Cause: Memory fragmentation
Alternate Pool: None Free: 0 Cause: No Alternate pool
-Process= "BGP Router", ipl= 0, pid= 638
-Traceback= 431A0884z 431B29D8z 431D17F8z 42876A4Cz 4291F244z 42922134z 42923FF8z 41D0AD80z 41D0BA5Cz 41D0BF60z 43DEBF08z 41D0C0E0z 41C867FCz 41C9A7ACz
May 15 08:48:43 EDT: %BGP-3-NOTIFICATION: sent to neighbor x.x.x.x 3/1 (update malformed) 0 bytes
May 15 08:48:43 EDT: %BGP-4-MSGDUMP: unsupported or mal-formatted message received from x.x.x.x:
FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF 0074 0200 0000 5540 0101 0040 0212 0204
0000 0D1C 0000 1935 0000 1293 0002 008A 4003 04CE DE19 0480 0404 0000 2978 4005
0400 0000 64C0 0824 0D1C 0003 0D1C 0056 0D1C 023F 0D1C 029A 0D1C 07FA 1935 03E8
1935 044C 1935 044E 1935 2711 1876 97D1 1867 02E9
May 15 08:48:43 EDT: %BGP-4-BGP_OUT_OF_MEMORY: BGP resetting because of memory exhaustion.

The exact same configuration works under 12 SXI and other versions

The 3BXL has 1GB of memory which according to the documentation for version 15 is what is required. Any ideas?

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello,

the short answer is that the sup720 3BXL is probably suited for at most 512,000 routes and cannot be used anymore to receive a ful BGP table as now it is 730,000 routes or more.

It has been a good choice some years ago when the full BGP table was less then 300,000 routes.

You should look at using ASR1000 for this.

Edit:

the datasheet reports up to one million routes

see

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/product_data_sheet09186a0080159856.html

Edit2:

I see that you say the following:

>> The exact same configuration works under 12 SXI and other versions

I agree with Mark you may be  facing a software issue with  15 IOS version or IOS 15 may use more memory for all processes and additional features and 1GB RAM is not enough in your scenario.

Hope to help

Giuseppe

[Mark Malone]

Hi
Could be due to a memory leak in software Malloc failures are an indication of that , best thing is upgrade or run the show tech through CLI analyzer , it can give good reports on memory issues , or post it here we can run it