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ONTAP initiator port shows question mark ?

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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.

 

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