Connectrix Brocade B-Series: On DS-6620B switches there is a chance that transient pcs errors are logged.

Impact:

Unnecessary SFP / cable troubleshooting on the middle ports of the DS-6620B.

Environment:

Dell Hardware: Connectrix DS-6620B

Brocade Software: Fabric OS 8.2.3b

Brocade Software: Fabric OS 8.2.3c1

Brocade Software: Fabric OS 9.1.1c

Problem:

There is an issue that triggers the PCS error counter to increase and a message to be logged in the errdump, these errors are transient.

That initiates troubleshooting to be done on the port and cable, (Swapping and/or cleaning optics, cables.)

Example:

In the errdump:

[C4-1023], 88355/1719, CHASSIS, WARNING, G620, Single RDY/Frame Loss detected and recovered on Slot 0,Port 34(26) rdy(0x1)/frame(0x0)

In the porterrshow:

/fabos/cliexec/porterrshow:

          frames      enc    crc    crc    too    too    bad    enc   disc   link   loss   loss   frjt   fbsy  c3timeout    pcs    uncor

       tx     rx      in    err    g_eof  shrt   long   eof     out   c3    fail    sync   sig                  tx    rx     err    err



34:    1.2g 700.9m   0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     98      8 

Note that:

The problem is only on the middle ports of the switch (ports 17-34).

The listed errors stay with the port and do not follow the cable and also after SFP swap the errors return.

There is a DEFECT in the Fabric OS code where the SFP electrical RX signal is over emphasized for the middle ports (ports 17-34), causing the pcs errors to increase on the physical switch port.

Brocade fixed this by optimizing the electrical RX signal of the SFP for those middle ports.

Brocade DEFECT FOS-860049

Fix:

Upgrade to FOS v9.2.0c or higher.

Upgrade to FOS v9.2.2 or higher.

Once upgrade is complete, they recommend disable / enable the affected ports that had PCS errors.

(This will impact the attached device, make sure redundancy is in place.)

Brocade DEFECT FOS-860049