Cisco Nexus 6004 and Mellanox QSFP

[andy.collins]

I am trying to get Mellanox QSFP cables to work between a variety of vendor switches.  However, I cannot get it to work on our Cisco Nexus 6004, but I can get the cable to work on Cisco Nexus 3172s and Arista switches just fine.

I have enabled support for 3rd party transceivers by enabling them with "service unsupported-transciever" and have other 3rd party cables that work just fine on it like a TrippLite Twinax cable. 

When I plug the cable in to the 6004 I get the following message:

6004# 2015 Jun 26 13:27:12 DCO-6004-1 %ETHPORT-3-IF_NON_CISCO_TRANSCEIVER: Non-Cisco transceiver on interface Ethernet6/1 is detected

Here are the additional details about the cable:

6004# sh interface transceiver details
Ethernet6/1
transceiver is present
type is QSFP Unknown Type-(unknown)
name is Mellanox
part number is MC220731V-003
revision is A1
serial number is DC501401368
nominal bitrate is 14100 MBit/sec
Link length supported for copper is 3 m
cisco id is –
cisco extended id number is 0
DOM is not supported

We are setting up a test environment where we will be running equipment off of Cisco and Mellanox switches.  We would prefer to use and run only one set of cables between everything.  I am aware that Cisco does not support 3rd party cables/transceivers, but neither does Mellanox.  So we have to choose somebody and Mellanox is about 1/3 cheaper with quotes on their cables.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Reza Sharifi]

Are you using 40Gig Twinax or fiber?

[andy.collins]

The cable from Mellanox is fiber and the cable type is Active.

[Reza Sharifi]

Are you connecting straight 40Gig or using the breakout cable to go from 40 to multiple 10 Gigs?
 

[andy.collins]

Straight 40Gig.  Only commands on either port is "switchport mode trunk".  Not set for a FEX or anything like that.

Attached picture of cable.

[Reza Sharifi]

I have never used Mellanox cables, but have used Panduit on Cisco 6004 and they worked fine. You may want to try one Panduit cable and see if you have any luck.

http://www.panduit.com/en/products-and-services/products/fiber-systems

HTH

[andy.collins]

Yeah, we might have to go another route.  I just found it odd that the cable works fine on 2 different Nexus 3172s, but not the 6004.  Thanks for the help.

[Reza Sharifi]

Yeah, with Cisco products, you never know what works and what doesn't. Sometimes even the so called "approved vendor products" don't work. There are a lots of posts regarding optics issues with Cisco switches and routers here as well.

Sorry..