Cable selection

Here’s some technical detail about the console cables, and their pin-outs, for Dell switches and routers. I think all the pin-out information applies to Cisco devices as well.

I think this is the cable I’d be using if our switches had RJ-45 console ports.

These 2 cables together is what I’m using to connect from a USB port to a male serial console port on a Dell PowerConnect 5424:

This is the cable I’d be using if I had a PC with an actual serial port (or a USB->serial port) and a switch or router with an RJ-45 console port. I think this is essentially the same skyblue cable that comes with switches:

New Firmware

[Dell PowerConnect 5424, PowerConnect 5448, v.V2.0.0.46, A10 Driver Details Dell US](http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=777T5) 
enable
copy tftp://192.168.2.47/powerconnect_54xx-20046.ros image
copy tftp://192.168.2.47/powerconnect_54xx_boot-2000.rfb boot
boot system image-2
show bootvar
reload

Use show bootvar to show indication that image-2 is the uploaded firmware version, that it’s not active (of course), and that it has an ‘*’ next to it, indicating that it will be active on the next boot.

TFTP Server

http://www.extraputty.com/features/tftp.html

I tried to use ExtraPuTTY first. I see how to configure the TFTP server; that’s intuitive enough. I don’t see how to start the server, and I didn’t find any quick answers online. Must be intuitive for everyone else.

http://downloads.solarwinds.com/solarwinds/Release/FreeTool/SolarWinds-TFTP-Server.zip

After getting the windows firewall issues worked out, the SolarWinds TFTP Server seems to work very well.

Switch config commands

See also: PowerConnect Common Example Commands - PowerConnect Forum - Network Switches - Dell Community.

enable
delete startup-config
reload

enable
configure
clock source sntp
clock timezone -7 zone MST
clock summer-time recurring usa zone MDT
sntp unicast client enable
sntp server 198.60.73.8
exit
exit

enable
configure
interface vlan 1
ip address 192.168.1.201 /21
exit
ip default-gateway 192.168.0.250
exit
exit

Set up the hostname and admin password for console/enable, telnet, and web-admin.

enable
configure
hostname good-hostname
username admin password GoodPassword level 15
enable password level 15 GoodPassword
line telnet
password GoodPassword
exit
exit
exit

Copy this running config into the startup config and reboot to test and verify.

enable
copy running-config startup-config
reload

To see configured user accounts:

enable
show users accounts
exit

NIST Time Servers

NIST Internet Time Service

iSCSI Setup

This is a management network which mostly contains iSCSI traffic and inter-server communications traffic.

Following the advice at Configuring a PowerConnect 5424 or 5448 Switch for use with an iSCSI storage system - Storage - Wiki - Storage - Dell Community:

enable
configure
port jumbo-frame
spanning-tree mode rstp
interface range ethernet g1-24
flowcontrol on
spanning-tree portfast
exit

Remove VOIP traffic config commands.

voice vlan oui-table remove 0001e3
voice vlan oui-table remove 00036b
voice vlan oui-table remove 00096e
voice vlan oui-table remove 000fe2
voice vlan oui-table remove 0060b9
voice vlan oui-table remove 00d01e
voice vlan oui-table remove 00e075 
voice vlan oui-table remove 00e0bb

Suggested: remove iSCSI prioritization. Since we use this network for other inter-server communication, I’m not running these commands. These commands remove iscsi enable mode, I guess, but as far as I can tell, that feature/optimization is not enabled anyway.

no iscsi enable
no iscsi target port 860
no iscsi target port 860exit

Instead of those commands, I ran iscsi enable. Later, I’ll get a look at our existing management switch to get a look at its configuration. I may need to configure something with the iscsi target. I don’t know what that means yet.

enable
configure
iscsi enable
exit
exit

enable
copy running-config startup-config
reload

Other Command-Line Guidance

Cisco Packet Tracer (network setup/configuration simulation)

To Do for existing management 1.x switch