Chapter 4 Troubleshooting Switch Fabric Level Issues; Troubleshooting Name Server Issues; Overview - Cisco MDS 9000 Series Troubleshooting Manual

S e n d c o m m e n t s t o m d s f e e d b a c k - d o c @ c i s c o . c o m .
Troubleshooting Switch Fabric Level Issues
This chapter describes switch fabric-level troubleshooting procedures and includes the following
sections:
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Troubleshooting Name Server Issues

This section describes how to identify and resolve problems with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family name
server. It includes the following sections:
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Overview

The name server provides a way for N ports and NL ports to register and discover FibreChannel
attributes. Registrations may happen explicitly, as a consequence of a request of the Nx port, or
implicitly by the switch at FLOGI time. Once registered, the attributes are made available to other Nx
ports or other switches. A separate name server database is maintained for each VSAN. The name server
uses the Fibre Channel Common Transport protocol (FC-CT) to communicate with Nx ports and
represents itself as an N port at the well-known FCID 0xFFFFFC.
One instance of the name server process runs on each Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch. In a multi-switch
fabric configuration, instances running on different switches share information and create a distributed
database of Nx port attributes. The name server defines a set of attribute objects with the following
operations on those objects:
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To troubleshoot name server problems, check the status of these three operations and verify the correct
distribution of attributes among name server instances within the fabric. These attributes include the
following:
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OL-5183-02, Cisco MDS SAN-OS Release 1.3
Troubleshooting Name Server Issues, page 4-1
Troubleshooting FSPF Issues, page 4-6
Troubleshooting Zoning Issues, page 4-14
Overview, page 4-1
Nx Port Registration Problems, page 4-2
Register Object
Deregister Object
Get Object
Port Type
C H A P T E R
Cisco MDS 9000 Family Troubleshooting Guide
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