When building out your UCS deployment, you create a series of Fibre Channel (FC) uplinks. Then you have to go back and add those FC uplinks to the VSAN’s that you created. This can be tedious if you have a lot of FC uplinks as you would need to modify each one. With Cisco’s Powertool, you can do this quite quickly with no mouse movement :)

$fabavsan = "VSAN_01"
$fabbvsan = "VSAN_02"
get-ucsvsan $fabavsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 13 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabavsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 14 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabavsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 15 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabavsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 16 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabbvsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 13 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabbvsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 14 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabbvsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 15 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true
get-ucsvsan $fabbvsan | add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -portid 16 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true

As you can see:

$fabavsan = "VSAN_01"
$fabbvsan = "VSAN_02"

are variable used so that you only need to modify the VSAN ID once. Otherwise, you would need to specify on each and every line.

This took me a while to figure out as Cisco’s get-help files (man pages for Linux folks) leave a lot to be desired.

if you run:

get-help add-ucsvsanmemberfcport -full

You get:

NAME
Add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort

SYNOPSIS
Adds Managed Object of type FabricFcVsanPortEp.

SYNTAX
Add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -Vsan <FabricVsan> [-PortId] <uint> [-SlotId] <uint> [-SwitchId] <string> [-AdminState <string>] [-Name <string>] [-ModifyPresent] [-XtraProperty <Hashtable>] [-Ucs <UcsHandle[]>] [
<CommonParameters>]

DESCRIPTION
Adds Managed Object of type FabricFcVsanPortEp. FC Port that attaches to the parent VSAN. Indicates the parent VSAN will be configured on the specified FC port (FC storage port or FC uplink port). This is
configured explicitly by the user.

PARAMETERS
-Vsan <FabricVsan>
Specifies a Vsan object. The Vsan must already exist.

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-PortId <uint>
Specifies the port identifier.

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-SlotId <uint>
Specifies the slot identifier.

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-SwitchId <string>
Specifies the switch id. Valid values are: A, B, NONE

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-AdminState <string>
The administrative (desired) state of this end-point. Valid values are: disabled, enabled

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-Name <string>
NO COMMENTS

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-ModifyPresent
The ModifyPresent option ensures that the add-cmdlets modify the MO, if it already exists, instead of returning an error.

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-XtraProperty <Hashtable>
The XtraProperty parameter ensures that unknown Managed Object properties can also be used.

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

-Ucs <UcsHandle[]>
Specifies a list of ucs connection object(s)

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input?
Accept wildcard characters?

<CommonParameters>
This cmdlet supports the common parameters: Verbose, Debug,
ErrorAction, ErrorVariable, WarningAction, WarningVariable,
OutBuffer and OutVariable. For more information, type,
"get-help about_commonparameters".

Which would lead you to believe that this command would work just fine:

add-UcsVsanMemberFcPort -Vsan VSAN_01 -portid 13 -slotid 2 -adminstate enabled -switchid A -modifypresent:$true

But it does not, you have to pipeline through the get-ucsvsan output first.

Tags: cisco, Cisco UCS, cloud, deployment, help files, linux, PowerShell, powertool