A nice feature with QSFP (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable) is that you can turn a single QSFP port into 2 or 4 independent ports using a breakout cable. In my home lab, I have an Nvidia/Mellanox SN2100 switch running Onyx (MLNX-OS), which I use for my iSCSI network. I also have an HPE MSA 2040…
By default, with Onyx (MLNX-OS), when you export the switch configuration, it is exported as a bin file rather than the regular text-based config files we are all used to. Fortunately, there’s a way to export the configuration as a text file. In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to generate and export…
I recently ran into an issue where I had uninstalled Onyx on my switch and I was trying to reinstall it but couldn’t because I was getting an error. Below is an example of the error. partition exists – please uninstall firstEXT4-fs (sda3): couldn’t mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilitiescp: write error: No space…
Switches that support ONIE (Open Network Install Environment) are amazing switches because you can just change which NOS (Network Operating System) you are running relatively easily. ONIE was created by Cumulus Networks in 2012. In 2020 Nvidia bought Cumulus just after purchasing Mellanox the year before. I will detail step-by-step how to install ONIE and…
In this post I will show you how to upgrade your switch running Onyx (MLNX-OS). I will detail how to do it via command line and via the web interface. The best way to make sure your upgrade is a success is to plan your upgrade path. I recommend following the upgrade paths as sometimes…
Recently I’ve been playing with some Nvidia/Mellanox switches specifically the SN2410. An issue that I ran into was that I didn’t have the BIOS password. All of the documentation says that the default BIOS password is admin. That password did not work on my switch. You can absolutely use the switch even without the BIOS…
