ONTAP initiator port shows question mark ?
Applies to
- ONTAP 9.3P2 or lower
- ONTAP 9.1P13 or lower
- ONTAP 9.4 or lower
- HBA Emulex XE201
- Fabric MetroCluster bridges are inaccessible
- NDMP backups are failing
Issue
- Impacted ONTAP versions 8.2.4P6, 9.0P1, 9.1, 9.1P10, 9.1P11, 9.1P3, 9.1P5, 9.1P6, 9.1P7, 9.1P8, 9.1P9, 9.2, 9.2P2, 9.3, 9.3P1, 9.3P2
- Impacts Emulex XE201 HBA when configured as initiator mode only
- In later versions of ONTAP this may be a cosmetic fabric discovery issue
- All the intiator ports on AFF nodes were showing switchport as "?"
Example:
slot 2: FC Host Adapter 2a (Emulex XE201 rev. 48, N-port, <UP>)
Link Data Rate: 16 Gbit
Switch Port: ?
- ATTO bridges listed under the affected adapter also report "?"
Example:FC-to-SAS Bridge: SiteA-FabA:7.126L0 : ???????? ???????????????? ???? FBXX00NXXXXXX
porterrshow
output shows all ports to which affected initiator ports are connected, reporting huge number of "link fail" and "loss sig".fabriclog
shows evidence of port flapping for same switch ports.- Link break was detected on the impacted port
fci.link.break:error]: Link break detected on Fibre Channel adapter 2a.