Hot plugging Catalyst Gig Blade. Can it be done?

T

typhoon43

2[H]4U
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Apr 5, 2001
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Just got a new 48 Port Gig-E blade for one of our Catalyst 6509's. I have been told that technically these are hot puggable, but I have also heard of people blowing the switch up when attempting this. I really don't feel like coming in at 2AM just to power down the Catalyst and bring it back up with the new blade. Any suggestions? Am I about to smoke one of our core switches? What's minimum wage these days in case I get fired? :p
 
Come in at 2am or figure out if $5.95/hour while saying "would you like fries with that" is enough to pay your bills ;)

seriously though, I wouldn't do it, have seen some horror stories happen and it's much better to look good infront of the boss for coming in at 2am than to even chance the possiblity of looking like a complete and utter retard when you have just destroyed few grand worth of equipment and put 40 something network clients out of business.

People expect us to work late and do maintenance at weird off-hours, whether you agree with that or not doesnt matter, it's the general "public" opinion and you're much better off following it.

Unless you got a brand new backup switch that is ready to go , then I say f-it and plug away :-D
 
Eater's right... 2am sucks horribly, but it;s kinda the nature of our business. Keep in mind the sole function of IT in most businesses is support. They pay us to keep shit up and running and available. Don't risk that.
 
umm yea 2-5am is common here.

They are supposed to be technically hot-pluggable/swappable, but I wouldn't do it. I came in a t 3am to swap cards in my 4506 this past summer.
 
Which cards are they? Which Supervisor module?

I've had to replace 4 6748 blades. Multiple times. During production. Absolutely no problems.

But, if your skittish, do it later.
 
Almost all blades in a Cat6k are hot swappable. You can insert / remove it at any time you'd like. Keep in mind that the bus on the switch stalls when the module is inserted, so it does interrupt traffic for about 200ms. Any longer than 2 seconds and your switch will reload automatically.

If you aren't comfortable doing it during production I would suggest waiting until after hours or during a maintenance window.
 
Been there, broke that.

Other that a slot blank faceplate I wouldent trust putting anything in a 6500. We have had to many incidents and now we do it after hours.
 
moetop said:
Been there, broke that.

Other that a slot blank faceplate I wouldent trust putting anything in a 6500. We have had to many incidents and now we do it after hours.
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That's a shame. I've done this literally hundreds of times without issue. The blades are, in theory at least, hot swappable.
 
hmm, still getting some yays, some nays.. I wanna do it LIVE.. that's what this world is about. THERE IS NO DOWNTIME!!
 
Hmmm.. Live? Well then what's the worst that can happen? Plan for that. Paranoia saves more than lives, it saves face too! :D
 
We've hot swapped alot of ethernet line cards without issues. Some of the other "hot-swappable" cards however are a different matter.
 
typhoon43 said:
hmm, still getting some yays, some nays.. I wanna do it LIVE.. that's what this world is about. THERE IS NO DOWNTIME!!
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sure, and we'll be a paper-less society in no-time too!!!

some things are industry bullshit talk, "hot-swappable" , "no downtime" and "upgrade" are on top of my list...

there hasn't been an upgrade yet that somewhere out there broke more than it fixed :D
 
They are absolutely supported. I work at cisco TAC, so I would definately hear an earfull if we did not support hot swapping. I have seen it done and done it myself hundreds of times. If it does blow up, make sure to scream at me really loudly :)
 
Forget 2am, when are all of your users (that use the 6500) not using the network? I'd say do it at 6:30 PM; all of your public-facing stuff will be on your DMZ, and not affected by the 6500 going off-line. Who cares if the internal LAN is down if there is no one trying to use it?
 
Fint said:
Forget 2am, when are all of your users (that use the 6500) not using the network? I'd say do it at 6:30 PM; all of your public-facing stuff will be on your DMZ, and not affected by the 6500 going off-line. Who cares if the internal LAN is down if there is no one trying to use it?
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Servers doing routines "may" be using it, but I'll try to minimize the damage. we need to do a CAT-OS upgrade to 7.6(9) before we can even slap the blade in, as it's not compatible with the 6 series OS.. That's going to be REAL fun. Guess we'll give that a whirl today :D

WISH ME LUCK!
 
I've swapped line cards at least a hundred times without incident, nor have I heard of this being common. Pulling the SUP is a different matter ;)
 
Well we got the CAT-OS up to sw 8.xx now, and then I swapped the blade. The secret was to make it my b*tch. I took it out of the bag and started gnawing on it to show it I was afraid.

eattheblade.JPG


Popped it in and it's good to go. From now on I'll be hot swapping everything I can get my hands (and teeth) on. Thanks for the replies gang.
 
Please tell me why you're asking that question on an online forum and not asking Cisco TACs? If your company can afford a switch like that they can afford support contracts.
 
shade91 said:
Please tell me why you're asking that question on an online forum and not asking Cisco TACs? If your company can afford a switch like that they can afford support contracts.
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Sometimes you get these switches used, and actually the support contracts aren't too cheap. I work in TAC - backbone LAN switching, and I say it's okay ;) Plenty of people don't buy them because they actually have knowledgable employees. The bad part is when the company can "afford" the switch at the expense of hiring good people. So they get a third party to call us up and then tell us to get in contact with the guy at XYZcorp. The guy at XYZcorp has no idea what's going on - that's how they can afford switches sometimes. I am guessing typhoon43 works for a company that is not like XYZcorp, but typhoon43 doesn't do the hardware swapping stuff every day.

Happy New Year!
 
osbjmg said:
Sometimes you get these switches used, and actually the support contracts aren't too cheap. I work in TAC - backbone LAN switching, and I say it's okay ;) Plenty of people don't buy them because they actually have knowledgable employees. The bad part is when the company can "afford" the switch at the expense of hiring good people. So they get a third party to call us up and then tell us to get in contact with the guy at XYZcorp. The guy at XYZcorp has no idea what's going on - that's how they can afford switches sometimes. I am guessing typhoon43 works for a company that is not like XYZcorp, but typhoon43 doesn't do the hardware swapping stuff every day.

Happy New Year!
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Actually, I tend to get much more concise information from my froums than TAC Engineers. We do all the hardware here in house, but our residnet Cisco guru left for a better job a few months back, which automatically threw me into that role. I've been a Windows Admin for 5+ years, but when it comes to Cisco, I can pretty much just play with the PIX and check ports on the Catalysts. I start CCNA classes Jan 30th, so that should help. As for asking here vs. the TAC, I KNEW Cisco would tell me it's hot swappable, but "in theory" and "in reality" are always a tad different. I got enough positives from these forums and Genmay to do it, and it went buttery smooth when I did. It's all good.
 
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