First Published: April 15, 2019

Release Notes for Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches, Cisco IOS XE Gibraltar 16.11.x

Introduction

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches are the next generation purpose-built 40 GigabitEthernet and 100 GigabitEthernet modular core and aggregation platform providing resiliency at scale with the industry’s most comprehensive security while allowing your business to grow at the lowest total operational cost. They have been purpose-built to address emerging trends of Security, IoT, Mobility, and Cloud.

They deliver complete convergence in terms of ASIC architecture with Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) 3.0. The platform runs an Open Cisco IOS XE that supports model driven programmability, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) Solid State Drive (SSD) local storage, and a higher memory footprint). The series forms the foundational building block for SD-Access, which is Cisco’s lead enterprise architecture.

It also supports features that provide high availability, advanced routing and infrastructure services, security capabilities, and application visibility and control.

Important Notes

Unsupported Features

  • Breakout Cables

  • Cisco Application Visibility and Control (AVC)

  • Cisco StackWise Virtual

  • IPsec VPN

  • Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) and Next Generation NBAR (NBAR2)

Complete List of Supported Features

For the complete list of features supported on a platform, see the Cisco Feature Navigator at https://www.cisco.com/go/cfn.

Accessing Hidden Commands

This section provides information about hidden commands in Cisco IOS XE and the security measures in place, when they are accessed. Hidden commands are meant to assist Cisco TAC in advanced troubleshooting and are therefore not documented. For more information about CLI help, see the Using the Command-Line Interface → Understanding the Help System chapter of the Command Reference document.

Hidden commands are available under:

  • Category 1—Hidden commands in privileged or User EXEC mode. Begin by entering the service internal command to access these commands.

  • Category 2—Hidden commands in one of the configuration modes (global, interface and so on). These commands do not require the service internal command.

Further, the following applies to hidden commands under Category 1 and 2:

  • The commands have CLI help. Entering enter a question mark (?) at the system prompt displays the list of available commands.

    Note: For Category 1, enter the service internal command before you enter the question mark; you do not have to do this for Category 2.

  • The system generates a %PARSER-5-HIDDEN syslog message when the command is used. For example: 
    *Feb 14 10:44:37.917: %PARSER-5-HIDDEN: Warning!!! 'show processes memory old-header ' is a hidden command. 
Use of this command is not recommended/supported and will be removed in future.

Apart from category 1 and 2, there remain internal commands displayed on the CLI, for which the system does NOT generate the %PARSER-5-HIDDEN syslog message.


Important

We recommend that you use any hidden command only under TAC supervision.

If you find that you are using a hidden command, open a TAC case for help with finding another way of collecting the same information as the hidden command (for a hidden EXEC mode command), or to configure the same functionality (for a hidden configuration mode command) using non-hidden commands.

Supported Hardware

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches—Model Numbers

The following table lists the supported switch models. For information about the available license levels, see section License Levels.

Switch Model

(append with “=” for spares)

Description

C9606R

Cisco Catalyst 9606R Switch

  • Redundant supervisor module capability

  • Four linecard slots

  • Hot-swappable fan tray, front and rear serviceable, fan tray assembly with 9 fans.

  • Four power supply module slots

Supported Hardware on Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches

Product ID

(append with “=” for spares)

Description

Supervisor Modules

C9600-SUP-1

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Supervisor 1 Module

This supervisor module is supported on the C9606R chassis

SATA1 SSD2 Modules (for the Supervisor)

C9K-F2-SSD-240GB

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 240GB SSD Storage

C9K-F2-SSD-480GB

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 480GB SSD Storage

C9K-F2-SSD-960GB

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 960GB SSD Storage

40 or 100 GigabitEthernet Line Cards

C9600-LC-24C

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 24-Port 40GE/12-Port 100GE Line Card.

It supports:

  • 12 ports of 100 GigabitEthernet (GE) or 24 ports of 40GE

  • QSFP on all ports and QSFP28 on the 100 GE ports

25 GigabitEthernet Line Cards

C9600-LC-48YL

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 48-Port 25GE/10GE/1GE line card.

It supports:

  • 48 ports of 25 GE, 10GE or 1GE

  • SFP28, SFP+ transceivers on all ports

10 GigabitEthernet Line Cards

1 GigabitEthernet Line Cards

AC Power Supply Modules

C9600-PWR-2KWAC

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 2000W AC Power Supply Module3

DC Power Supply Modules

C9600-PWR-2KWDC

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series 2000W DC Power Supply Module
1 Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA)
2 Solid State Drive (SSD) Module
3 Power supply output capacity is 1050W at 110 VAC.

Compatibility Matrix

The following table provides software compatibility information.

Catalyst 9600

Cisco Identity Services Engine

Cisco Access Control Server

Cisco Prime Infrastructure

Gibraltar 16.11.1

2.6

2.4 Patch 5

5.4

5.5

-

Web UI System Requirements

The following subsections list the hardware and software required to access the Web UI:

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Processor Speed

DRAM

Number of Colors

Resolution

Font Size

233 MHz minimum4

512 MB5

256

1280 x 800 or higher

Small
4 We recommend 1 GHz
5 We recommend 1 GB DRAM

Software Requirements

Operating Systems

  • Windows 10 or later

  • Mac OS X 10.9.5 or later

Browsers

  • Google Chrome—Version 59 or later (On Windows and Mac)

  • Microsoft Edge

  • Mozilla Firefox—Version 54 or later (On Windows and Mac)

  • Safari—Version 10 or later (On Mac)

Licensing

This section provides information about the licensing packages for features available on Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series Switches.

License Levels

The software features available on Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches fall under these base or add-on license levels.

Base Licenses

  • Network Advantage

Add-On Licenses

Add-On Licenses require a Network Essentials or Network Advantage as a pre-requisite. The features available with add-on license levels provide Cisco innovations on the switch, as well as on the Cisco Digital Network Architecture Center (Cisco DNA Center).

  • DNA Advantage

To find information about platform support and to know which license levels a feature is available with, use Cisco Feature Navigator. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to https://cfnng.cisco.com. An account on cisco.com is not required.

License Types

The following license types are available:

  • Permanent—for a license level, and without an expiration date.

  • Term—for a license level, and for a three, five, or seven year period.

  • Evaluation—a license that is not registered.

License Levels - Usage Guidelines

  • Base licenses (Network-Advantage) are ordered and fulfilled only with a permanent license type.

  • Add-on licenses (DNA Advantage) are ordered and fulfilled only with a term license type.

  • An add-on license level is included when you choose a network license level. If you use DNA features, renew the license before term expiry, to continue using it, or deactivate the add-on license and then reload the switch to continue operating with the base license capabilities.

  • Evaluation licenses cannot be ordered. They are not tracked via Cisco Smart Software Manager and expire after a 90-day period. Evaluation licenses can be used only once on the switch and cannot be regenerated. Warning system messages about an evaluation license expiry are generated only 275 days after expiration and every week thereafter. An expired evaluation license cannot be reactivated after reload. This applies only to Smart Licensing. The notion of evaluation licenses does not apply to Smart Licensing Using Policy.

Cisco Smart Licensing

Cisco Smart Licensing is a flexible licensing model that provides you with an easier, faster, and more consistent way to purchase and manage software across the Cisco portfolio and across your organization. And it’s secure – you control what users can access. With Smart Licensing you get:

  • Easy Activation: Smart Licensing establishes a pool of software licenses that can be used across the entire organization—no more PAKs (Product Activation Keys).

  • Unified Management: My Cisco Entitlements (MCE) provides a complete view into all of your Cisco products and services in an easy-to-use portal, so you always know what you have and what you are using.

  • License Flexibility: Your software is not node-locked to your hardware, so you can easily use and transfer licenses as needed.

To use Smart Licensing, you must first set up a Smart Account on Cisco Software Central (http://software.cisco.com).


Important
Cisco Smart Licensing is the default and the only available method to manage licenses.

For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to cisco.com/go/licensingguide.

Deploying Smart Licensing

The following provides a process overview of a day 0 to day N deployment directly initiated from a device. Links to the configuration guide provide detailed information to help you complete each one of the smaller tasks.

Procedure
Step 1

Begin by establishing a connection from your network to Cisco Smart Software Manager on cisco.com.

In the software configuration guide of the required release, see System Management → Configuring Smart Licensing → Connecting to CSSM

Step 2

Create and activate your Smart Account, or login if you already have one.

To create and activate Smart Account, go to Cisco Software Central → Create Smart Accounts. Only authorized users can activate the Smart Account.

Step 3

Complete the Cisco Smart Software Manager set up.

  1. Accept the Smart Software Licensing Agreement.

  2. Set up the required number of Virtual Accounts, users and access rights for the virtual account users.

    Virtual accounts help you organize licenses by business unit, product type, IT group, and so on.

  3. Generate the registration token in the Cisco Smart Software Manager portal and register your device with the token.

    In the software configuration guide of the required release, see System Management → Configuring Smart Licensing → Registering the Device in CSSM

With this,

  • The device is now in an authorized state and ready to use.

  • The licenses that you have purchased are displayed in your Smart Account.

Using Smart Licensing on an Out-of-the-Box Device

If an out-of-the-box device has the software version factory-provisioned, all licenses on such a device remain in evaluation mode until registered in Cisco Smart Software Manager.

In the software configuration guide of the required release, see System Management → Configuring Smart Licensing → Registering the Device in CSSM

Finding the Software Version

The package files for the Cisco IOS XE software are stored on the system board flash device (flash:).

You can use the show version privileged EXEC command to see the software version that is running on your switch.


Note
Although the show version output always shows the software image running on the switch, the model name shown at the end of this display is the factory configuration and does not change if you upgrade the software license.

You can also use the dir filesystem: privileged EXEC command to see the directory names of other software images that you might have stored in flash memory.

Software Images

Release

Image Type

File Name

Cisco IOS XE Gibraltar 16.11.1

CAT9K_IOSXE

cat9k_iosxe.16.11.01.SPA.bin

Licensed Data Payload Encryption (LDPE)

cat9k_iosxeldpe.16.11.01.SPA.bin

Scaling Guidelines

For information about feature scaling guidelines, see the Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches datasheets at:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9600-series-switches/nb-06-cat9600-series-data-sheet-cte-en.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9600-series-switches/nb-06-cat9600-series-line-data-sheet-cte-en.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9600-series-switches/nb-06-cat9600-ser-sup-eng-data-sheet-cte-en.html

Limitations and Restrictions

  • Auto negotiation: The SFP+ interface (TenGigabitEthernet0/1) on the Ethernet management port with a 1G transceiver does not support auto negotiation.

  • Control Plane Policing (CoPP): The show run command does not display information about classes configured under system-cpp policy, when they are left at default values. Use the show policy-map system-cpp-policy or the show policy-map control-plane commands in privileged EXEC mode instead.

  • Hardware Limitatons — Optics:

    • Copper cables are not supported with 25GE, 40GE, and 100GE configurations

    • 1G (SFP) transceivers are not supported.

    • Installation restriction for C9600-LC-24C linecard with CVR-QSFP-SFP10G adapater —This adapter must not be installed on an even numbered port where the corresponding odd numbered port is configured as 40GE port. For example, if port 1 is configured as 40GE, CVR-QSFP-SFP10G must not be installed in port 2.

  • Hardware Limitatons — Power Supply Modules:

    • Input voltage for AC power supply modules—All AC-input power supply modules in the chassis must have the same AC-input voltage level.

    • Using power supply modules of different types—When mixing AC-input and DC-input power supplies, the AC-input voltage level must be 220 VAC.

  • Convergence: During SSO, a higher convergence time is observed while removing the active supervisor module installed in slot 3 of a C9606R chassis.

  • QoS restrictions

    • When configuring QoS queuing policy, the sum of the queuing buffer should not exceed 100%.

    • For QoS policies, only switched virtual interfaces (SVI) are supported for logical interfaces.

    • QoS policies are not supported for port-channel interfaces, tunnel interfaces, and other logical interfaces.

  • Secure Shell (SSH)

    • Use SSH Version 2. SSH Version 1 is not supported.

    • When the device is running SCP and SSH cryptographic operations, expect high CPU until the SCP read process is completed. SCP supports file transfers between hosts on a network and uses SSH for the transfer.

      Since SCP and SSH operations are currently not supported on the hardware crypto engine, running encryption and decryption process in software causes high CPU. The SCP and SSH processes can show as much as 40 or 50 percent CPU usage, but they do not cause the device to shutdown.

  • USB Authentication—When you connect a Cisco USB drive to the switch, the switch tries to authenticate the drive against an existing encrypted preshared key. Since the USB drive does not send a key for authentication, the following message is displayed on the console when you enter password encryption aes command:
    Device(config)# password encryption aes
Master key change notification called without new or old key

  • VLAN Restriction—It is advisable to have well-defined segregation while defining data and voice domain during switch configuration and to maintain a data VLAN different from voice VLAN across the switch stack. If the same VLAN is configured for data and voice domains on an interface, the resulting high CPU utilization might affect the device.

  • YANG data modeling limitation—A maximum of 20 simultaneous NETCONF sessions are supported.

  • Embedded Event Manager—Identity event detector is not supported on Embedded Event Manager.

  • Secure Password Migration—Type 6 encrypted password is supported from Cisco IOS XE Gibraltar 16.10.1 and later releases. Autoconversion to password type 6 is supported from Cisco IOS XE Gibraltar 16.11.1 and later releases.

    If the startup configuration has a type 6 password and you downgrade to a version in which type 6 password is not supported, you can/may be locked out of the device.

  • The File System Check (fsck) utility is not supported in install mode.

Caveats

Caveats describe unexpected behavior in Cisco IOS-XE releases. Caveats listed as open in a prior release are carried forward to the next release as either open or resolved.

Cisco Bug Search Tool

The Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST) allows partners and customers to search for software bugs based on product, release, and keyword, and aggregates key data such as bug details, product, and version. The BST is designed to improve the effectiveness in network risk management and device troubleshooting. The tool has a provision to filter bugs based on credentials to provide external and internal bug views for the search input.

To view the details of a caveat, click on the identifier.

Open Caveats in Cisco IOS XE Gibraltar 16.11.x

Identifier

Description

CSCvm00478

"%FMFP-3-OBJ_DWNLD_TO_DP_FAILED: R0/0: fman_fp_image: intf TweFiveGigE5/0/1" error during bootup

CSCvm06279

C9600R convergence time is in milliseconds when SSO is done by manual SUP pull out

CSCvm44217

"show idprom int te0/1" should be supported for 10GE SFP mgmt port

CSCvm45875

HA/SVL: Setting MTU 9216 is rebooting the standby

CSCvm95962

SFP+ mgmt: Incorrect led status for stby sup when transceiver isnt inserted.

CSCvn03974

C9600R: interface cfgs resets to default upon mods shut-->save cfgs-->reload-->then no shut mods

CSCvn25403

The process iomd has been helddown (rc 134) on OIR of slot 2

CSCvn31685

After modifying security-acl SDM template Security acl functionality not working on Tunnel interface

CSCvn57413

Traffic drop during ipv6 multicast scale test

CSCvo47513

active supervisor crashed during oir of a linecard.

Resolved Caveats in Cisco IOS XE Gibraltar 16.11.1

Identifier

Description

CSCvk00432

Memory leak in alloc_repexp_entry caused by alloc_ril_index failure

CSCvm45417

Cat9K HA/ 16.9.x,16.10.x- Connectivity issue due to wrong dest MAC rewrite for routed packet

CSCvm94132

AAL-INFRA:L2 failed to get ID handle

CSCvo19717

crash in fib_path_list_walk_apply (cisco.comp/cfc_cefmpls/cef/src/fib_path_list_deps.c)

Troubleshooting

For the most up-to-date, detailed troubleshooting information, see the Cisco TAC website at this URL:

https://www.cisco.com/en/US/support/index.html

Go to Product Support and select your product from the list or enter the name of your product. Look under Troubleshoot and Alerts, to find information for the problem that you are experiencing.

Related Documentation

Information about Cisco IOS XE at this URL: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/ios-nx-os-software/ios-xe/index.html

All support documentation for Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Switches is at this URL: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/catalyst-9600-series-switches/tsd-products-support-series-home.html

Cisco Validated Designs documents at this URL: https://www.cisco.com/go/designzone

To locate and download MIBs for selected platforms, Cisco IOS releases, and feature sets, use Cisco MIB Locator found at the following URL: http://www.cisco.com/go/mibs

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