Cisco Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Supervisor 2 Module Troubleshooting Guide

This document describes the procedure to upgrade the N7K-SUP2/E bootflash firmware on both
the active and standby supervisor to permanently resolve the firmware issue addressed in the
software defect 

 : N7K-SUP2/E: eUSB Flash Failure or Unable to Save

Configuration. changes

  

This procedure upgrades the bootflash firmware on both supervisors in a Nexus 7000 chassis
while remaining on your current software version.  As an alternative, you may upgrade to an NX-
OS software release which contains the firmware fix for 

Another option is to use the flash recovery tool (available for download) and can automatically fix
any single flash errors when present. This is not a permanent fix. This procedure highlighted in this
document upgrades the bootflash firmware permanently so that the onboard embedded flash
devices are no longer susceptible to the RAID failure.

Each N7K supervisor 2/2E is equipped with 2 eUSB flash devices in RAID1 configuration, one
primary and one mirror. Together they provide non-volatile repositories for boot images, startup
configuration, and persistent application data. 

What can happen is over a period of months or years in service, one of these devices may be
disconnected from the USB bus, causing the RAID software to drop the device from the
configuration. The device can still function normally with 1/2 devices. However, when the second
device drops out of the array, the bootflash is remounted as read-only, meaning we cannot save
configuration or files to the bootflash, or allow the standby to sync to the active in the event it is
reloaded.

There is no operational impact on systems running in a dual flash failure state, however a reload
of the affected supervisor is needed to recover from this state. Furthermore, any changes to
running configuration will not be reflected in startup and would be lost in the event of a power
outage.