[f-nsp] IronWare 8.0.40 not supported on most products...

[Mike Allen]

Robert, et al, I would urge you to lean on your local SE resource, we all
advocate for our customers back into corporate.  In the end, engineering
resources are finite (we are hiring software engineers as fast as we can
find them) and the company allocates time accordingly.  All that said, we
do add features into patch releases similar to the vendors, to address
customer requests and needs.  For example, here is a snippet of the release
notes for enhancements added in 8.0.30b that did not exist in prior
releases:

*Enhancements in FastIron 08.0.30b *

Brocade FastIron Release 08.0.30b introduces serveral new features and
enahcncement.

 Flexible Authentication enhancement

o Additional RADIUS attribute support for Dynamic VLAN assignments

o Dynamic Tagged VLAN assignements not limited to Voice VLANs

o Support for single and multiple untagged VLANs per port is configurable

 Stacking enhancements

o ICX 7750-48C and ICX 7750-48F devices support stacking distances of 10 Km
using LR4 fiber optic cables attached to ports 1/2/5 and 1/2/6. Manual
trunk configuration using port 1/2/1 or 1/2/4 as a lead default stacking
port is required.

 LAG symmetric load balancing

o Sometimes DPI devices and firewalls are installed as a bump in the wire
deployment on certain child links of a LAG. In such a case symmetrical
hashing is very important for LAG interfaces. This allows the reverse flow
of traffic to be directed through the same child link on the LAG and is
bound to flow through the same DPI device. This enables proper accounting
on the DPI of the traffic in both the forward and reverse flows. The same
is true for firewall devices as well so they could filter out unwanted
traffic in both the directions.

 LAG Scaling

o In FastIron 08.0.30b, the number of LAGs supported on each ICX 7250, ICX
7450, or ICX 7750 increases to 256. When you downgrade from FastIron
08.0.30b, only the first 128 LAGs are deployed.The remaining LAGs are not
deployed, and related configuration is lost.

 DHCP snooping, DAI, and IP source guard over LAG

o DHCPv4 snooping, Dynamic ARP inspection and IP source guard are supported
over LAG. DHCPv4 snooping, Dynamic ARP inspection and IP source guard were
previously supported features and in 8.0.30b were supported over LAG as
well.

 Delay time in notifying VE down event

o When all the ports in the VLAN go into an inactive state (for example,
the non-forwarding state), the device notifies the Layer 3 protocols of the
VE down event only after the configured timer expires. Once the timer
expires, the device checks if any of the ports is in the forwarding state.
If no ports are in the forwarding state, the device notifies the Layer 3
protocols of the VE down event. If any of the ports is in the forwarding
state, the device ignores the down event.

So the shift is really how we add features.  Significant new features (such
as the SPX or ERSPAN you mentioned) may depend on new hardware, and would
be implemented in what we consider a major release.  For the features you
mention with the simplified vlan management and command history, those look
to be great candidates to port from 8.0.40 back to previous versions of
code.  The best way to make that happen is to be vocal to your partner and
Brocade SE, and let them champion those features internally.

Thanks,
Mike

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 3:06 PM, Robert Hass <robhass at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regarding 'remove-vlan' - To be honest we was pinging our Brocade partner
> for that kind of feature. Imagine removing 600 VLANs from one port - we
> doing 'perl scripts + copy tftp running-config' as workaround. And as I
> know Partner was pinging proper SE / PM for integrate feature enhancement.
> Hearing there was a lot of other engineers begging for that kind of
> feature.
>
> And and the end we can forget about that important command as we're ICX
> 6xxx series.
>
> Exacly same story about 'show CLI history'. But here partner sends us
> workaround command 'dm history' working on current platforms.
>
>
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