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Table of contents for the manual
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Sun Microsystems, Inc. 4150 Network Circle Santa Clara, CA 95054 U .S.A. 650-960-1300 Send comments about this document to: docfeedback@sun.com Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s , B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes P ar t No . 817-5626-12 May 2004, Re vision A[...]
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Copyright 2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Cir cle, Santa Clara, California 95054, U.S.A. All rights reserved. Sun Microsystems, Inc. has intellectual pr operty rights relating to technology embodied in the product that is described in this document. In particular , and without limitation, these intellectual pr operty rights may include on[...]
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Contents iii Contents 1. Documentation and Miscellaneous Information 1–1 1.1 Upgrading the BIOS on a B200x Server Blade 1–2 1.2 Before Installing Solaris x86 Onto a Blade 1–2 1.3 Miscellaneous Information 1–2 1.3.1 Using N1 Provisioning Softwar e 1–2 1.3.2 Using the Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Blade 1–3 1.3.3 Downloading New Fi[...]
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iv Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 3.1 Preparing to Install Solaris x86 Onto a Blade 3–1 3.1.1 Solaris x86 Drivers and Documentation 3–2 3.1.2 Overview of the Solaris x86 Installation Process 3–3 3.2 Applying Mandatory Software Patches to the Solaris x86 Install Image 3– 3 3.2.1 Downloa[...]
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Contents v 6.3.1 Aggregated Links 6–10 6.3.2 Switch-to-switch T agged VLAN T runk Connections 6–1 1 6.4 Setting up a T agged VLAN T runk W ith Cisco Switches 6–12[...]
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vi Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004[...]
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1-1 CHAPTER 1 Documentation and Miscellaneous Information These Product Notes contain important information about this release of the Sun Fire B1600 blade system chassis. This is the first r elease of the product to support Enterprise Linux version 3.0 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, running on B100x and B200x server blades. This chapter contai[...]
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1-2 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 1.1 Upgrading the BIOS on a B200x Server Blade T o run Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 3.0 or SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 on a B200x server blade, you must first upgrade the BIOS to version 1.1.32 . This version of the BIOS is available fr om the followin[...]
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Chapter 1 Documentation and Miscellaneous Information 1-3 1.3.2 Using the Sun Fir e B10n Content Load Balancing Blade The Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Blade is now available to provide load balancing across server blades in the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis and other horizontally scaled Sun platforms. T o use the B10n Content Load Bal[...]
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1-4 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 1.4 V iewing the Latest Documentation for the Chassis and Its Components For the most up-to-date documentation, including the most up-to-date Product Notes, visit the following Sun documentation website: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/S[...]
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Chapter 1 Documentation and Miscellaneous Information 1-5 1.4.2 Documentation Errata ■ In the printed version of the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Compliance and Safety Manua l (817-2571-10), the contact details given for Zuheir T otari are out of date. The correct contact details are as follows: Sun Microsystems Ltd Spar c House Guillemont[...]
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1-6 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004[...]
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2-1 CHAPTER 2 Linux This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 2.1, “Installing Linux Onto a B100x or B200x Blade” on page 2-2 ■ Section 2.2, “Upgrading the BIOS on B200x Server Blades” on page 2-3 ■ Section 2.3, “B100x and B200x (Linux) Server Blade Issues” on page 2-5[...]
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2-2 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 2.1 Installing Linux Onto a B100x or B200x Blade T o install the Linux operating system onto a blade, you must first build a PXE boot installation environment. The software r equired to build a PXE boot installation environment is available on the CD supplied[...]
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Chapter 2 Linux 2-3 2.2 Upgrading the BIOS on B200x Server Blades T o run Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 3.0 or SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, service pack 3 on a B200x server blade, the blade must have BIOS version 1.1.32 installed. This version of the BIOS is available from the following website: http://wwws.sun.com/software/download/network.h[...]
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2-4 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 2. Check the version of the BIOS currently running on the blade, to establish whether the upgrade is necessary: 3. Copy the BIOS image from the beta website to a known location on the blade. 4. Run the biosupdate command: The blade prompt r eturns when the up[...]
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Chapter 2 Linux 2-5 2.3 B100x and B200x (Linux) Server Blade Issues The following problems have been observed on both B100x and B200x server blades: ■ 4868095: Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 does not support layer 2 VLANs The Advanced Server kernel (version 2.4.9-e.3) does not support layer 2 VLANs. This means that the sunconfig utility is not insta[...]
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2-6 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 ■ 4991972: B200x blade locks into a r epeated “boot net” loop following a BIOS update The CMOS footprint may change between revisions of the BIOS. If this is the case, and the CMOS is not reset to its default values during the blade reboot following a B[...]
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3-1 CHAPTER 3 Solaris x86 This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 3.1, “Preparing to Install Solaris x86 Onto a Blade” on page 3-1 ■ Section 3.2, “Applying Mandatory Software Patches to the Solaris x86 Install Image” on page 3-3 ■ Section 3.3, “Issues Affecting B100x and B200x Server Blades That ar e Running Solaris [...]
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3-2 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 3.1.1 Solaris x86 Drivers and Documentation For the first full r elease of the Solaris x86 software to support B100x or B200x blades, the documentation and some mandatory patches requir ed for Solaris 9 (12/03) are available on the web. Note – The Sun Fire [...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-3 3.1.2 Overview of the Solaris x86 Installation Process 1. Set up a network install image for Solaris x86 using the Solaris 9 (12/03) Media Kit. For instructions, refer to the Solaris 9 Installation Guide supplied with the Media Kit. Note – If you intend to use the Solaris x86 CD media (instead of the DVD media), you need[...]
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3-4 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 Further information about installing the Solaris 9 x86 operating system is available in the Solaris 9 Installation Guide supplied with the Solaris 9 media kit. The document can also be downloaded from http://docs.sun.com. 3.2.1 Downloading the B100x/B200x Man[...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-5 4. At the Solaris prompt on the system you are going to use as the Network Install Server , unzip the f iles you have downloaded. T o do this, type: 5. Proceed to “Creating a Network Install Server” on page 3-6 . # cd /var/tmp/blades # unzip mis.259-4174-11.zip[...]
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3-6 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 3.2.2 Cr eating a Network Install Server T o install the Solaris x86 software over the network onto a blade, you must create an install server . This section describes how to set up an install server on the same subnet as the server blade you are about to ins[...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-7 4. Add the patches and packages automatically to the network install server image by typing: where install_dir_path is the path to the install image on your install server . 5. Y ou can now proceed to Chapter 10 of the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide to perform the operating system setup [...]
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3-8 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 3.3 Issues Af fecting B100x and B200x Server Blades That ar e Running Solaris x86 The known problems listed in this section have been observed to af fect both B100x and B200x server blades. They are pr esented in three gr oups: ■ Section 3.3.1, “Issues fo[...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-9 4873161: Need Support for Soft Poweroff in Solaris x86 Solaris x86 does not currently support power button events generated thr ough ACPI. This means that a powerof f command issued on the system controller ( sc> poweroff s n ) will not cause an orderly shutdown of the blade’s operating system before powering off the [...]
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3-10 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 4856440: Require hostid to Be Set Fr om BSC on Solaris x86 B100x and B200x The value of the hostid for blades that are running Solaris x86 is dif ferent from the hostid value programmed into the B1600 chassis for the blade’s physical location. When Solaris[...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-11 4975579 Bootpath Line Missing After PXE Install With Single Solaris Partition During an interactive Solaris installation the install program will prompt you to select the partition layout of the disk. If you choose to layout the disk with a single disk partition that combines x86boot and Solaris partitions, then when the [...]
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3-12 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 4922593: Link Messages Seem to Contradict IPMP State During a Switch Reset If you have IPMP configur ed on a blade and you reset the chassis’s integrated switch, you will see an error message that appears to contradict the IPMP configuration of the blade. [...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-13 3.3.2 Err or Messages That Can be Safely Ignored This section lists error messages that will be be observed during a network installation or reboot. In all cases these messages can be safely ignored. They have no impact on B100x and B200x blades. 4903388 consconfig complains on servers with no frame buffer When the B100x [...]
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3-14 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 Despite this message, the blade will perform a Jumpstart installation if you have configur ed it to do so. Y ou can easily confirm that a Jumpstart is in fact taking place because, early in the booting and installation process, the output will contain refer [...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-15 4871718: bootstrap complains about devices that have been disabled in the BIOS On the B100x you will see the following message about /dev/diskette0 during a reboot or PXE boot: On the B200x you will see the following message about /dev/diskette0 during a reboot or PXE boot: On the B200x you might also see the following me[...]
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3-16 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 4321917: ACPI Resource Conf licts Unnecessarily Reported During the booting of a B200x blade you might see the following message briefly displayed: If you see this message in respect of a B200x blade, you can safely ignore it. 3.3.3 Other Issues 4877872: Dif[...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-17 FIGURE 3-1 The Network Interfaces on a B200x Blade The B200x BIOS displays the network interfaces as shown in FIGURE 3-2 . FIGURE 3-2 The Network Interfaces Listed by the B200x BIOS The names that the BIOS uses to identify each network interface correspond with the names used by the System Controller ’s bootmode command[...]
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3-18 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 The network interfaces are displayed by the DCA in the order in which it discovers them when it probes the har dware. FIGURE 3-3 The Boot Devices as Displayed by the Device Configuration Assistant When the network interfaces are plumbed under Solaris they ar[...]
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Chapter 3 Solaris x86 3-19 If you are conf iguring IPMP network redundancy , note that the achievement of network resilience (enabling a blade to recover fr om different har dware and network failures) depends upon each IPMP gr oup containing one connection to each switch. A configuration in which both interfaces in a group of two wer e connected t[...]
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3-20 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004[...]
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4-1 CHAPTER 4 SP ARC Solaris This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 4.1, “Installing SP ARC Solaris Onto a B100s Server Blade” on page 4-2 ■ Section 4.2, “B100s (SP ARC Solaris) Server Blade Issues” on page 4-2[...]
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4-2 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 4.1 Installing SP ARC Solaris Onto a B100s Server Blade T o install the Solaris 8 HW 12/02 (Build 5) Operating Environment onto a B100s blade, follow the instructions in the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Software Setup Guide, the Solaris 8 Installation [...]
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Chapter 4 SP ARC Solar is 4-3 ■ 4726915: SunVTS will not start because of missing XML libraries T o run SunVTS you need to load the SUNWlxml and SUNWlxmlx packages. These are not loaded by default in Solaris 8, therefor e you must add them manually from the supplemental CD supplied with Solaris 8 HW 12/02. They are located in the following direct[...]
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4-4 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 ■ 481 1241: When you install Solaris with “Entir e distribution plus OEM support” and error message appears If you install Solaris with “Entire distribution plus OEM support" onto a server blade, the following error message will appear on the con[...]
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5-1 CHAPTER 5 System Contr oller This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 5.1, “Upgrading the System Controller (SC) Firmware” on page 5-2 ■ Section 5.2, “What T o Do If Y ou Lose Y our Password for the System Controller” on page 5-2 ■ Section 5.3, “System Controller Software Issues” on page 5-4[...]
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5-2 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 5.1 Upgrading the System Contr oller (SC) Firmwar e T o support Sun Fire B200x blades in a Sun Fir e B1600 blade system chassis, you must be running System Controller f irmware version 1.2. T o perform the upgrade of the System Controller f irmware, follow th[...]
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Chapter 5 System Controller 5-3 3. At the sc> prompt, set a new password for the default user ( admin ). T o set a new password for user admin , type: The password you specify can be up to eight characters long. It must begin with an alphabetic character , and it must contain at least one lower-case alphabetic character . Y ou can use any of the[...]
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5-4 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 5.3 System Contr oller Softwar e Issues 5.3.1 System Contr oller Firmware 1.2 The following known problems apply to the current r elease of the System Controller firmwar e for this product: ■ 48791 14: System Controller sometimes r esets or fails over if it[...]
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Chapter 5 System Controller 5-5 ■ 4866668: When the message ’Dynamic FRUID packet discovery failur e r ecovered’ shows in the logs for a blade, it is possible that some fault events will be missing or only partially described. This problem can occur if the System Contr oller is reset immediately after an event has been reported on the serial [...]
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5-6 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 5.3.3 System Contr oller Firmware 1.0 The following known problems applied to r elease 1.0 of the System Controller firmwar e (they are fixed in r elease 1.1): ■ 4810785: Recovery from output rail faults is not correctly r eported under some circumstances. [...]
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6-1 CHAPTER 6 The System Chassis’s Integrated Switch This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 6.1, “Switch Firmware Issues” on page 6-2 ■ Section 6.2, “Issues Affecting the W eb Graphical User Interface to the Switch” on page 6-8 ■ Section 6.3, “The T erm “T runk” Meaning Either an Aggregated Link Or a T agged V[...]
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6-2 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 6.1 Switch Firmwar e Issues The following known problems apply to the curr ent release of the switch firmwar e for this product: ■ 4899178: Blade network traf f ic is only allowed thr ough the IP f ilter on the VLAN configur ed as the management VLAN. The m[...]
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Chapter 6 The System Chassis’ s Integrated Switch 6-3 ■ 4871779: Blades ar e unable to r eceive multicast packets when IGMP querying is enabled. Multicasting on the switch does not work correctly if the IP address for the switch is not configur ed. This is only likely to be the case if the IP address is configur ed by DHCP and the DHCP process [...]
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6-4 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 ■ 4876495: The port status is unstable There is a known pr oblem with Spanning T ree (STP and RSTP) when it is used with aggregated links. When you have an aggr egated link (a single link comprised of multiple ports) between two switches and you enable span[...]
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Chapter 6 The System Chassis’ s Integrated Switch 6-5 The ports NETP0, NETP1, NETP4, NETP5, and SNP8 through SNP15 ar e on one switch chip. The ports NETP2, NETP3, NETP6, NETP7 and SNP0 through SNP7 are on the other . ■ Multiple Spanning T ree Pr otocol: the spanning tree mst commands are not available in the current r elease of the switch firm[...]
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6-6 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 the System Controller next time the switch boots. The command to change the DHCP client identifier will be r emoved from the next release of the switch firmwar e. ■ 4795640: Resetting with the factory default configuration causes pr ovisioning errors Saving[...]
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Chapter 6 The System Chassis’ s Integrated Switch 6-7 ■ 4773408: Spanning tree mode cannot be set when spanning tr ee support is disabled Setting the spanning tree mode for the switch can only be done when spanning tree is enabled. If you wish to set the initial spanning tree mode for the switch to a particular setting (for example in a configu[...]
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6-8 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 6.2 Issues Af fecting the W eb Graphical User Interface to the Switch A graphical user interface (GUI) is available for configuring the switch. T o access it, point a web browser at the host name or IP address you have used for the switch. The following probl[...]
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Chapter 6 The System Chassis’ s Integrated Switch 6-9 ■ 4828965: Disabling global GVRP state prevents dynamic VLANs from leaving ports If you disable GVRP globally on the switch by issuing the following command: then VLANs that have been learned dynamically are not dropped even after the GVRP leave-all timer has expired (normally 10 seconds). T[...]
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6-10 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 ■ The pages of the web GUI include options for configuring an HTTPS server . This functionality is not enabled in the current release of the switch f irmware. ■ The web GUI (Switch Config=>Addr ess T ables=>NETMGT Port ID) cannot display the MAC ad[...]
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Chapter 6 The System Chassis’ s Integrated Switch 6-11 T o implement a configuration combining the ports NETP0 and NETP1 into an aggregated link called channel group 1, you would type the following commands: 6.3.2 Switch-to-switch T agged VLAN T runk Connections The Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Switch Administration Guide also uses the ter[...]
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6-12 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004 6.4 Setting up a T agged VLAN T runk W ith Cisco Switches There is a known pr oblem with setting a switch port to trunk mode if that port is connected to a port on a Cisco switch also in trunk mode (note that we use the word “trunk” in the sense of a poi[...]