Troubleshooting Cisco Nexus Switches and NX-OS

Book excerpt: The definitive deep-dive guide to hardware and software troubleshooting on Cisco Nexus switches The Cisco Nexus platform and NX-OS switch operating system combine to deliver unprecedented speed, capacity, resilience, and flexibility in today's data center networks. Troubleshooting Cisco Nexus Switches and NX-OS is your single reference for quickly identifying and solving problems with these business-critical technologies. Three expert authors draw on deep experience with large Cisco customers, emphasizing the most common issues in real-world deployments, including problems that have caused major data center outages. Their authoritative, hands-on guidance addresses both features and architecture, helping you troubleshoot both control plane forwarding and data plane/data path problems and use NX-OS APIs to automate and simplify troubleshooting. Throughout, you'll find real-world configurations, intuitive illustrations, and practical insights into key platform-specific behaviors. This is an indispensable technical resource for all Cisco network consultants, system/support engineers, network operations professionals, and CCNP/CCIE certification candidates working in the data center domain. · Understand the NX-OS operating system and its powerful troubleshooting tools · Solve problems with cards, hardware drops, fabrics, and CoPP policies · Troubleshoot network packet switching and forwarding · Properly design, implement, and troubleshoot issues related to Virtual Port Channels (VPC and VPC+) · Optimize routing through filtering or path manipulation · Optimize IP/IPv6 services and FHRP protocols (including HSRP, VRRP, and Anycast HSRP) · Troubleshoot EIGRP, OSPF, and IS-IS neighbor relationships and routing paths · Identify and resolve issues with Nexus route maps · Locate problems with BGP neighbor adjacencies and enhance path selection · Troubleshoot high availability components (BFD, SSO, ISSU, and GIR) · Understand multicast protocols and troubleshooting techniques · Identify and solve problems with OTV · Use NX-OS APIs to automate troubleshooting and administrative tasks