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aristanetworks / sonic

Open source drivers and initialization library for Arista platforms running SONiC
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Alternative Broadcom profile (for different port configurations) #23

Closed maq123 closed 2 years ago

maq123 commented 6 years ago

Hello,

I own 7050QX-32S switch. I realized that I cannot really configure anything like cable breakout or QSA+ adapters with SONiC. The problem as far I can tell is the lack of support for SAI's port api on the Broadcom side.

However, after looking at the /etc/bcm/td2-a7050-qx32s-32x40G.config.bcm file I conclude that for a person knowing the platform and aware of Broadcom SDK/OpenNSL configuration it might be possible to create a configuration allowing the use of breakout cable or QSA adapter (the latter might be harder due to QSA'a proprietary nature).

My question is, would it be possible to prepare such profile configuring one or two ports to able to be used with a breakout cable, and if possible another pair accepting a QSA+ adapter?

Staphylo commented 6 years ago

Hi maq123,

Are you trying to use the first 4 SFP+ ports of the 7050QX-32S or is your use case relying on the 32 QSFP+ ports?

If you desire cable breakout, it will require a new broadcom configuration with lots of changes. This is a time consuming task since it has to be written manually and has to be validated against a dut with the appropriate front panel port configuration. It's also not trivial to write without knowledge but SONiC starts having a lot of examples.

For QSA+ adapters you should be able to alter the existing 32x40G configuration and port config by changing the speeds from 40G to 10G.

maq123 commented 6 years ago

hi @Staphylo

Apologies for a late reply, I was vacationing.

I am experimenting with QSFP+ ports only. Do you think it might have actually been easier to try to use SFP+ ones instead of messing around with QSA adapters?

Regarding the cable breakout, I indeed modified the config on my own but apparently, I am doing something wrong and I can't get the breakout to operate correctly. I was hoping that someone from the Arista team could at least point me towards the right direction. At this stage I do not seek to get this officially supported by SONIC, I would rather try to verify if that could actually be achieved.