Cisco Nexus 5596UP Install: An Engineer's Important Install Note For Non-Production Nexus Testing

First and foremost, Im not that engineer Im referring to in the post title.  I got an email from Jeff H. about a Cisco Nexus install he was doing.  He had a successful install on his project, which were 2 5596UPs and 6 2248s FEXs.  Based on his description of his topology, it was basically the same as the topology in my previous post, which you can find here.  He mentioned one important note to me that I did not experience, that we both think is important for an install if you are looking online for some help.  One thing to note here is that Jeff did not tie his Nexus gear into two core 6500s like I did during the install.  I believe he was setting this up in a lab environment first for testing purposes before deployment of the Nexus equipment.  He had an issue getting the vPC peer to an 'peer is alive' status.  See below what his status looked like initially:

pdc-core01# sh vpc

Legend:

                (*) - local vPC is down, forwarding via vPC peer-link

vPC domain id                     : 1   

Peer status                       : peer link is down             

                                  (peer-keepalive not operational,           

                                  peer never alive)                          

vPC keep-alive status             : Suspended (Destination IP not reachable)

Configuration consistency status  : failed  

Per-vlan consistency status       : success                       

Configuration inconsistency reason: Consistency Check Not Performed

Type-2 inconsistency reason       : Consistency Check Not Performed

vPC role                          : none established              

Number of vPCs configured         : 0   

Peer Gateway                      : Disabled

Dual-active excluded VLANs        : -

Graceful Consistency Check        : Disabled (due to peer configuration)

Auto-recovery status              : Disabled

What Jeff noted was that when he connected the management interfaces together with a straight through patch cable, the vPC peer status became what you see below (peer is alive).  I personally did not know this.  Very good job to Jeff to note this.  I think this is great info for folks trying to get a Nexus infrastructure going in a lab first before deploying into production.  Thanks Jeff for sharing your install experience.

pdc-core02# sh vpc b

Legend:

                (*) - local vPC is down, forwarding via vPC peer-link

vPC domain id                     : 1   

Peer status                       : peer adjacency formed ok      

vPC keep-alive status             : peer is alive                 

Configuration consistency status  : success 

Per-vlan consistency status       : success                       

Type-2 consistency status         : success 

vPC role                          : primary                       

Number of vPCs configured         : 0   

Peer Gateway                      : Disabled

Dual-active excluded VLANs        : -

Graceful Consistency Check        : Enabled

Auto-recovery status              : Disabled