Minicom is by default not installed.

1. Install Minicom with the following command
   

   sudo apt-get install minicom

2. Find your serial port
   

   dmesg | grep tty

   $ dmesg | grep tty
[    0.001251] console [tty0] enabled
[   72.953237] usb 6-1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

   I use a USB serial port, my laptop doesn’t have a build in serial port.
   So the name of the serial port is ttyUSB0.

3. Configure Minicom
   

   sudo minicom -s

   • Select “Serial Port setup”
   • Enter A to change the selected serial port, in my case change to /dev/ttyUSB0
   • Enter E to change the line speed to 9600 8N1
   • Select “Save setup as dfl”
4. Exit Minicom
5. Start Minicom with
   

   sudo minicom

And you are  good to go.

Connect with a serial cable to the Foundry ServerIron XL.

1) Unplug the Switch
2) Plug the switch back in, and be immediately ready to:
3) Hit b within 2 seconds, to enter into the boot monitor
4) Type:

no password
boot system flash primary

5) Foundry will boot up, now

FastIron> enable
No password has been assigned yet…
FastIron#

6)Set a new password

Conf t
FastIron (config)# enable super-user NewPassword
FastIron (config)# write memory

A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual iSCSI customers using VMware

You really should read it if your using a SAN in combination with ESX 3.5

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-iscsi-customers-using-vmware.html

Every ESX server has 2 NICs connected to the iSCSI for VMFS and iSCSI Initiators from the VM’s. Both NICs are connected to a different switch for redundancy. So for example ESX NIC 1 is connected to port 1 from switch X and ESX NIC 2 is connected to port 1 from switch Y. Port 1 from both switches are configured as a trunk  ( Trunk1 ) not using LACP. Between the 2 switches there is a different trunk configured for the data that needs to be directed to another switch.


I configured my ESX Nic Teaming like this.

As you can see 1 NIC is disconnected. This is done for testing. When only 1 NIC is connected the TCP Retransmits disappears.

Port 1 trough 4 on both HP ProCurve switches are used to link the 2 switches together. Here is the relevant config lines from the switch.

Here is the config for the port used by the ESX server.

Anyone some bright ideas how to resolve this problem?
When browsing the internet for config problems between HP ProCurve switches and ESX 3.5 I found the following websites. After reading this I came to the conclusion my config is the same as recommended here.

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/09/05/vmware-esx-nic-teaming-and-vlan-trunking-with-hp-procurve/
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/07/16/understanding-nic-utilization-in-vmware-esx/
http://universitytechnology.blogspot.com/2008/09/vmware-esx-vm-network-aggregation.html
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/09/05/setting-vmware-esx-vswitch-load-balancing-policy-via-cli/

UPDATE -

As it turns out HP does not support teaming over 2 switches ( yet ).
This means the ports in Trunk 1 of switch x does not share the MAC adresses with the ports in Trunk 1 of switch y.

So there are 2 solutions left.

1. Connect both NICs from the ESX server on 1 HP switch.In VMWare configure the VSwitch with both NICs as active.  Setup a trunk on this switch with 2 ports.
   Load balancing works, but no redundancy.
2. Connect 1 NIC to switch x and 1 NIC to switch y. In VMWare configure the VSwitch with 1 NIC as active and 1 NIC as standby. Setup a trunk in not necessary.
   No Load balancing, but you will have redundancy.

I settled for now with solution 2.
Monitoring the NICs from my ESX servers with Cacti to monitor the load from the NICs.

Still searching for a solution with both load balancing as redundancy.

First, remove the password:

1) Unplug the Switch

2) Plug the switch back in, and be immediately ready to:

3) Hit b, to enter into the boot monitor

4) Type:

no password

boot system flash primary

5) Foundry will boot up, and you can ‘enable’ without being prompted for a password

To reset your ServerIronXL to factory defaults:

6) After enabling, type:

erase start

NOTE: This is permanent! There is no going back! Make sure this is what you want to do! You are resetting to factory defaults (nothing!)

7) Reboot, and enjoy your clean slate

As always, if you find this helpful, please let me know!

You can also clear the counters and statistics for an individual port using the clear statistics <port-list> command.

clear statistics <<port-list> | global >

When executed with the <port-list> option, clears the counters and statistics for an individual port.When executed with the global option, clears all counters and statistics for all interfaces except SNMP. The show interfaces [<port-list>] command displays the totals accumulated since the last boot or the last clear statistics command was executed. The menu and web pages also display these totals.

SNMP displays the counter and statistics totals accumulated since the last reboot; it is not affected by the clear statistics global command or the clear statistics <port-list> command. An SNMP trap is sent whenever the statistics are cleared.

Note
The clearing of statistics cannot be uncleared.