There are a few steps you need to do on the Brocades before moving on to cabling and zoning. The process is pretty straightforward, but worth documenting especially for those who are doing it for the first time.
After you power on the switch there are two ways of setting it up: GUI or CLI. We’ll go hardcore and do all configuration in CLI, but if you wish you can assign a static IP to your laptop from the 10.70.70.0/24 subnet and browse to https://10.77.77.77. Default credentials are admin/password for both GUI and CLI.
Network Settings
To configure network settings, such as a hostname, management IP address, DNS and NTP use the following commands:
> switchname PRODFCSW01
> ipaddrset
> dnsconfig
> tsclockserver 10.10.10.1
Most of these commands are interactive and ask for parameters. The only caveat is, if you have multiple switches under the same fabric, make sure to set NTP server to LOCL on all subordinate switches. It instructs them to synchronize their time with the principal switch.
Firmware Upgrade
This is the fun part. You can upgrade switch firmware using a USB stick, but the most common way is to upgrade using FTP. This obviously means that you need to install a FTP server. You can use FileZilla FTP server, which is decent and free.
Download the server and the client parts and install both. Default settings work just fine. Go to Edit > Users and add an anonymous user. Give it a home folder and unpack downloaded firmware into it. This is what it should look like:
To upgrade firmware run the following command on the switch, which is also interactive and then reboot:
> firmwaredownload -s
If you’re running a Fabric OS revision older than 7.0.x, such as 6.3.x or 6.4.x, then you will need to upgrade to version 7.0.x first and then to your target version, such as 7.3.x or 7.4.x.
In the next blog post I will discuss firmware upgrades in more detail, such as how to do a non-disruptive upgrade on a production switch and where to download vendor-specific FOS firmware from.
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