Good question, I don't know if you can setup that type of authentication with the switch.

As far as output, you can output any text from the cli to local storage on the switch (volatile or slot0) or ftp. For example:

PXDC_MDS9509b# show flogi database > ftp:flogi_output.txt

or

PXDC_MDS9509b# show flogi database > volatile:flogi_output.txt

Yes

Thanks, I will do that. I have heard of pearl scripts, and such. But it does seem that Cisco does not have an external CLI client. Otherwise, I would have had many answers by now saying "yes they do, here is the product name." Thanks for your help.

OG2

I am not sure what you mean by external CLI client. Are looking for something other than the CLI that is native to Cisco switches?

Zone modification via CLI can be done interactively or by uploading config files to the running config that contain all the changes you want to make.

Aran

can you configure private key authentication on Cisco ?

I honestly don't know if they do and have never looked for one. Changes to the SAN fabric are not that frequent for me and the Cisco CLI or Fabric Manager GUI is fine for small changes and the CLI using config files works for large changes.

If you get a better answer to your question, post it back here. I would like to know if you find a better solution.

Cheers,
Aran

And as far as getting a listing of all zones in a text file from the switch. Telnet in using SSH or just use PuTTY and run the following:

PXDC-MDS9509b# show zones vsan 20 > ftp:zones_vsan20.txt

or the following to just see the zones that are in the active zoneset:

PXDC-MDS9509b# show zoneset active vsan 20 > ftp:zones_vsan20.txt

OK, but is there a CLI client like symcli for MDS. I agree that you can upload updates to the config of the switch, but how would you query the switch and get a listing of all zones, etc. For example on a unix host I can run the following to see if a host is logged into the FA on the frame.

symmask -sid xxxx list logins | grep host123
and get an output that I can then save to a file:

10000000c90000a Fibre host01 10000000c90000a 697563 No Yes
10000000c90000b Fibre host01 10000000c90000b 677563 No Yes

An interactive CLI from a unix host.

How would you automate several updates to the zone set of a switch?

just telnet/ssh to the switch.

Automation my be tricky because you will be updating the running-config of the SAN-OS and then will need to copy that to the startup-config.

You can write out all your changes in a text file before hand though and simply upload that to the switch running-config. That would save the time of making all the changes interactively on the switch.

When I have had to make a lot of changes to the switch, that is what I would do. Then it is just a few short commands: uploading the config and saving the config.

Yes. Something you can script. For example you can script several allocations to the VCM though the symcli interface and then run them in a cron job. How would you do that in Cisco.

I will, I work in a very large shop where we make many changes a night. I do appreciate your help and will pass on anything I find out.

if you can make key based ssh connection to cisco, then you could try writing perl/bash scripts that would ssh to the switch and input commands for you. Worth a shot.

What about PLINK from the PuTTY suite of tools? Isn't that capable of running interactively from within a host OS?