Looking for documentation on how to replace a failed SUP on the 6880-X-LE platform?

rpatnaik_slf · ‎02-17-2015

To Whom it May Concern,

I don't believe that you can swap out a SUP on the 6880-x-LE platform and as a result I'd suspect if the SUP fails you'd have to swap out the entire chassis. This said I was looking to see whether any of you may have tried this already. I have an idea of how to do it:

1) Identify which Switch is active on the VSS

2) Assumption if SUP failed on Active Switch - Standby Switch has now become active

3) If by chance this is not the case - force a failover

4) Shut all 10GE ports attached to failed switch. To control recovery.

5) Replace defective switch and attach all cabling.

6) Copy IOS binary on USB flash from working switch and port it to bootdisk of new RMA switch.

7) Copy IOS from USB to bootdisk of RMA'd switch.

8) Setup VSS domain, VSL link, DA link and change boot marker to point to correct IOS.

9) Convert stand-alone to virtual.

10) New RMA'd switch should come up as standby in VSS pair (no pre-emption).

11) VSS active should sync configuration with SHUT ports to RMA'd Standby Switch.

12) Systematically no shut ports on active switch.

13) Fail back over if required

Thoughts/comments?

RP

Leo Laohoo · ‎02-20-2015

I don't believe that you can swap out a SUP on the 6880-x-LE platform and as a result I'd suspect if the SUP fails you'd have to swap out the entire chassis.

It's a full-blown chassis replacement.

This also means that if the Sup2T gets superseded you can't upgrade and you'll need to upgrade the chassis. This is why the 6880-X option is not a very popular option. You'll only use 6880-X when you have space constraints.

rpatnaik_slf · ‎02-26-2015

Understood. But I was wondering if someone would chime in on the steps I outlined. I'm going to try it anyways.

Reza Sharifi · ‎01-10-2017

Just one thing. Before you do step 1, make a good backup copy of your startup config. As for the rest, it all looks correct to me.

HTH

InayathUlla Sharieff · ‎02-20-2015

As Leo said already that this is fixed configuration box:-

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-6880-x-switch/data_sheet_c78-728228.html

hence you cant do any module replacement on the same.

Noclss2000 · ‎01-10-2017

The SUP modules are fixed and cannot be replaced.

Looking at your steps, I would assume if the SUP has failed, VSS would have already failed over to the standby. I figure the active wouldn't be running, atleast enough to run the control plane.

other than that, this looks like what we did when my 6880 had multiple failures. Unfortunately, even though Cisco has said internally when my SE was asking around about these, they do not appear very reliable. I have 2 hospital environments running these as the collapsed core. One site (first implementation) it has been running for 2 years without any known issues. The second site (~ 1 year old) we have had issues where the line card failed in the standby. We replaced the line card with another, it failed. Then we had line cards failing in the active as well. We finally had to pull line cards out on both 6880's and run all uplinks off the SUP. We fought with Cisco and finally got ALL hardware replaced (6880s, line cards, fans, power supplies, etc) and upgraded the IOS to SY6 as suggested. About 3 weeks later, the line card in the standby failed yet again. I have the replacement line card in box next to my desk and now we are working on trying to get all 6880s sent back, including the new ones we bought for 2 other implementations. We are wanting to switch out to 4500-Xs.

Hope you have better luck than we've had with them.