Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Modular with Cisco IOS software (1)

Overview

This product announcement focuses on Cisco®Catalyst®Cisco IOS on 6500 series switches®See Figure 1 ).

The Cisco Catalyst 6500 series, modular with Cisco IOS software, improves operational efficiency and minimizes downtime through continuous evolution of software infrastructure. By running the modular Cisco IOS subsystem as an independent process, this important innovation can be:

• Minimizes unplanned downtime through self-recoverable Processes
  
• By upgrading the ISSU software in the sub-system running), software changes are simplified.
  
• Embedded event manager (EEM) is integrated to implement automatic policy control at the process level.

Figure 1. Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Modular with Cisco IOS software

The Catalyst 6500 series provides hardware-based forwarding through ASIC on PFC or DFC. The control plane feature of the Catalyst 6500 series runs on a dedicated CPU on a complex MSFC component.

• The control plane manages traffic control, such as route protocol updates and traffic management.
  
• The data plane is responsible for the actual group forwarding through ASIC.

A completely independent data plane ensures that, even if the control plane is interrupted, the traffic can be forwarded continuously as long as the smart features of the software are sufficient to program the hardware for uninterrupted operation. With the redundant switching management engine, the Catalyst 6500 series continuously forward NSF in the event of a hardware fault in the master switching management engine) and stateful switching SSO) the feature still provides a continuous data forwarding plane.

Figure 2: Architecture

The Cisco IOS software modularized the subsystems into independent processes, improved the memory architecture of the Cisco IOS software, and provided process-level fault isolation and subsystem ISSU functions. These improvements are provided in Cisco IOS software for the Catalyst 6500 series Supervisor Engine 720 and Supervisor Engine 32, while retaining a wealth of features and operating environments familiar to network operators. Cisco IOS software modularization will first be available as an option for Cisco IOS 12.2 (18) SXF. For more information, see the Release Notes: http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/relnotes/index.htm

Advantages

Cisco IOS software modularization on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 series provides the following advantages.

Operation consistency

Although software modularization has brought a lot of improvements to Cisco IOS software on the Catalyst 6500 series, there is no need to make any changes from the operational perspective. Management interfaces such as CLI and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or system logs are still the same as before. To support new features, new commands and show commands in the execution and configuration modes are added. The software release and reconstruction are the same as before, but the patch support is added.

Protected memory

In the memory architecture supported by software modularization, the process uses protected address space. Each process and its related subsystems "run" in an independent memory space. With this mode, there will be no memory corruption and multiple processes.

Fault Suppression

The advantage of protected memory space is that the reliability is improved because problems in one process do not affect other parts of the system. For example, if a low-key system process fails or fails as expected, the key functions required by the continuous forwarding Group will not be affected.

Process restorability

The modular process is built on Protected memory space and fault suppression, and can now be restarted separately. To test or process a non-responsive process, you can use a new CLI command to manually restart the process. In this way, you can quickly recover from temporary errors without interrupting group forwarding. An integrated high-reliability subsystem can continuously check the Process status and track the number of restarts of a process within a specified interval. If the system cannot be restored after the process is restarted, the high-reliability subsystem will take high-level actions, such as switching the management engine or restarting the system.

Process Modularization

Some control plane functions have been modularized, which includes most common features. Modular processes include but are not limited:

• Routing process
  
• Internet daemon
  
• Raw IP address Processing
  
• TCP Process
  
• UDP Process
  
• Cisco Protocol process discovery
  
• System log daemon
  
• Any embedded event manager component
  
• File System
  
• Media drive
  
• Installation Manager

Software Upgrade during subsystem operation

There is no doubt that the most important advantage of protected memory space and process restart is that users can change the software while the software is running. Software modularization enhances the Cisco IOS software infrastructure, and selective system maintenance patches can be implemented through separate patches, which is a single upgrade that can affect one or more subsystems ). By providing version management and patch management functions, software modularization allows users to download, verify, install, and activate patches without restarting the system. Because packet forwarding is not affected during the patch process, network operators can now make flexible software changes at any time. A patch affects only the components involved in the upgrade, which means that the network administrator only needs to re-authenticate the software part related to the upgrade.