Virtual Console For Standby Supervisor Engine - Cisco Catalyst 4500 series Administration Manual

Configuring Supervisor Engine Redundancy

Virtual Console for Standby Supervisor Engine

Catalyst 4500 series switches can be configured with two supervisor engines to provide redundancy.
When the switch is powered, one of the supervisor engines becomes active and remains active until a
switchover occurs. The other supervisor engine remains in standby mode.
Each supervisor engine has its own console port. Access to the standby supervisor engine is possible
only through the console port of the standby supervisor engine. You must connect to the standby console
to access, monitor or debug the standby supervisor.
The virtual console for a standby supervisor Engine enables you to access the standby console from the
active supervisor engine without requiring a physical connection to the standby console. It uses IPC over
EOBC to communicate with the standby supervisor engine, which emulates the standby console on the
active supervisor engine. Only one active standby console session is active at any time.
The virtual console for the standby supervisor engine allows users who are logged onto the active
supervisor engine to remotely execute show commands on the standby supervisor engine and view the
results on the active supervisor engine. Virtual console is available only from the active supervisor
engine.
You can access the standby virtual console from the active supervisor engine with the attach module,
session module, or remote login commands on the active supervisor engine. You must be in privilege
EXEC mode (level 15) to run these commands to access the standby console.
Once you enter the standby virtual console, the terminal prompt automatically changes to
hostname-standby-console where hostname is the configured name of the switch. The prompt is restored
back to the original prompt when you exit the virtual console.
You exit the virtual console with the exit or quit commands. When the inactivity period of the terminal
on the active supervisor engine where you logged in exceeds the configured idle time, you are
automatically logged out of the terminal on the active supervisor engine. In this instance, the virtual
console session is also terminated. Virtual console session is also automatically terminated when the
standby is rebooted. After the standby boots up, you need to create another virtual console session.
To log in to the standby supervisor engine using a virtual console, enter the following command:
Switch# session module 2
Connecting to standby virtual console
Type "exit" or "quit" to end this session
Switch-standby-console# exit
Switch#
If the standby console is not enabled, the following message appears:
Switch-standby-console#
Standby console disabled.
Valid commands are: exit, logout
The standby virtual console provides the standard features that are available from the supervisor console
Note
such as command history, command completion, command help and partial command keywords.
The following limitations apply to the standby virtual console:
•
Software Configuration Guide—Release IOS XE 3.5.0E and IOS 15.2(1)E
10-10
Chapter 10 Configuring Supervisor Engine Redundancy Using RPR and SSO on Supervisor Engine 6-E and Supervisor
All commands on the virtual console run to completion. It does not provide the auto-more feature;
it functions as if the terminal length 0 command has been executed. It is also noninteractive. You
cannot interrupt or abort an executing command by any key sequence on the active supervisor
engine. If a command produces considerable output, the virtual console displays it on the supervisor
engine screen.
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