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Password Reset on Cisco MDS 9100 Series Fibre Channel Switch

My most recent customer engagement, was to re-use some older hardware as vSphere disaster recovery. The kit includes a EMC Clariion SAN, and two Cisco MDS 9124 switches.

The customer didn’t setup these FC switches, and required a password reset. Which I was happy to do for him, until I realised the Cisco article online is slightly wrong. So below are the steps I took to get the job done.

Password Reset/Recovery Steps

First off stick your console cable into the switch,

1. Power Cycle the Switch and keep pressing Ctrl + C until you see;

loader>

2. You then need to find the boot filename, using the “dir” command

loader> dir bootflash:
bootflash:

 12288 lost+found/
 18678784 m9100-s2ek9-kickstart-mz.4.1.3a.bin
 51055100 m9100-s2ek9-mz.4.1.3a.bin
 4798 mts.log

3. You need to use the “kickstart” file to load the firmware, using the command “boot” and the filename

loader> boot m9100-s2ek9-kickstart-mz.4.1.3a.bin7 

Booting bootflash:m9100-s2ek9-kickstart-mz.4.1.3a.bin ...
.................
Automatic boot of image at addr 0x00000000 ...

Note: If you try to boot the other “.bin” file you will get a MD5 checksum error

loader> boot m9100-s2ek9-mz.4.1.3a.bin

Booting bootflash:m9100-s2ek9-mz.4.1.3a.bin ...
................................................ERROR: Corrupted or invalid NBI: MD5 checksum failed !

Once the image is loaded, you will get a prompt;

switch(boot)#

5. To change the password, move into “config t” mode, then issue the following command “admin-password (your password)

switch(boot)#config t
switch(boot)(config)# admin-password Password1234

There is restrictions on the password that you can use,

Password should contain characters from at least three of the following classes: lower case letters, upper case letters, digits and special characters.

6. Once done, exit global configuration mode, then issue the “copy run start” command to save to your startup config to ensure the password is retained if the switch is rebooted.

switch(boot)#copy run start

Then reload your switch

switch(boot)#reload

Once successfully reloaded, you should be able to login with the username “admin” and your chosen password.

 

Regards

Dean

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