About Graceful Insertion and Removal
You can use graceful insertion and removal to gracefully eject a switch and isolate it from the network in order to perform debugging or upgrade operations. The switch is removed from the regular forwarding path with minimal traffic disruption. When you are finished performing debugging or upgrade operations, you can use graceful insertion to return the switch to its fully operational (normal) mode.
In graceful removal, all protocols and vPC domains are gracefully brought down and the switch is isolated from the network. In graceful insertion, all protocols and vPC domains are restored.
The following protocols are supported (for both IPv4 and IPv6 address families):
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Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
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Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)
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Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (ISIS)
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Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
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Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)
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Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
Note |
For graceful insertion and removal, the PIM protocol is applicable only to vPC environments. During graceful removal, the vPC forwarding role is transferred to the vPC peer for all northbound sources of multicast traffic. |
Profiles
By default, the system isolates all enabled protocols during graceful removal and restores them during graceful insertion. The protocols are isolated and restored in a predefined order.
If you want to isolate, shut down, or restore the protocols individually (or perform additional configurations), you can create a profile with configuration commands that can be applied during graceful removal or graceful insertion. However, you need to make sure that the order of the protocols is correct and any dependencies are considered.
The switch supports the following profiles:
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Maintenance-mode profile—Contains all the commands that will be executed during graceful removal, when the switch enters maintenance mode.
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Normal-mode profile—Contains all the commands that will be executed during graceful insertion, when the switch returns to normal mode.
The following commands (along with any configuration commands) are supported in the profiles.
Note |
The shutdown command takes precedence when both shutdown and isolate are configured under a routing protocol instance or maintenance-mode profile. |
Command |
Description |
---|---|
isolate |
Isolates the protocol from the switch and puts the protocol in maintenance mode. |
no isolate |
Restores the protocol and puts the protocol in normal mode. |
shutdown |
Shuts down the protocol or vPC domain. |
no shutdown |
Brings up the protocol or vPC domain. |
system interface shutdown [exclude fex-fabric] |
Shuts down the system interfaces (except the management interface). |
no system interface shutdown [exclude fex-fabric] |
Brings up the system interfaces. |
sleep instance instance-number seconds |
Delays the execution of the command by a specified number of seconds. You can delay multiple instances of the command. The range for the instance-number and seconds arguments is from 0 to 2177483647. |
python instance instance-number uri [python-arguments] Example: python instance 1 bootflash://script1.py |
Configures Python script invocations to the profile. You can add multiple invocations of the command to the profile. You can enter a maximum of 32 alphanumeric characters for the Python arguments. |
Snapshots
In Cisco NX-OS, a snapshot is the process of capturing the running states of selected features and storing them on persistent storage media.
Snapshots are useful to compare the state of a switch before graceful removal and after graceful insertion. The snapshot process consists of three parts:
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Creating a snapshot of the states of a few preselected features on the switch and storing them on the persistent storage media
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Listing the snapshots taken at various time intervals and managing them
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Comparing snapshots and showing the differences between features