The company I work for has a few of these Infinera Cloud eXpress DWDM systems, but we knew very little about them, and documentation is really scarce and hard to find on the public internet. After a recent issue with one I made it my mission to dig into a spare and write a little bit of documentation so that we can resolve issues in the future and share it, and I figure some of you nice people might appreciate the information as well if you have one of these systems already or are looking to pick up one used off ebay. Please feel free to ask any questions or submit some information of your own so that the generations that come after us aren't SOL. I'll note that this is specifically for the CX-10E platforms running RC17.0.2, but some of this information may apply to other systems and firmware versions.

Updating/Restoring Firmware Infinera

At some point you may find it necessary to upgrade, downgrade, or repair the firmware on one of the Infinera OTN devices. If you are in this situation I wish you the best of luck, and below I will provide some tips and tricks I have discovered.

1. Boot the system into the ZIPL prompt by spamming enter when the ZIPL loader prompt comes up.
2. Type the reboot_unlock command to boot ZIPL into full privilege mode, this should load ZIPL automatically after the reboot.
3. Enter the shell command from ZIPL to enter a bash shell.
4. From another computer, copy the desired firmware file onto a USB 2.0 flash drive formatted as ext3. Currently the known working and good firmware revision is RC17.0.2.0140.x86.tar.gz, and that version will be used in the following examples. If a new known working firmware version is found please edit the following commands to reflect the new firmware file. Although RC17.2.1.0237.x86.tar.gz is known to boot correctly on our hardware, we are unsure how to configure this revision at this time. These files should be in [CENSORED] under Infinera_FW.
5. Insert the flashdrive and mount /dev/sdb to a temporary directory in the filesystem, preferably a new directory in the root called "usb"
6. cp /usb/RC17.0.2.0140.x86.tar.gz /f0/base/tar/
7. Verify permissions on /f0/base/tar/RC17.0.2.0140.x86.tar.gz (ls -l)
8. exit the bash shell to return to ZIPL
9. From ZIPL, type install /f0/base/tar/RC17.0.2.0140.x86.tar.gz local to begin the installation. It will ask you to confirm and then reboot multiple times before it reloads with an empty database on the selected firmware revision. Remember not to omit the local flag at the end or the installation will fail.

Infinera: Initial Configuration and Setup

First Boot

After installing the firmware "Updating/Restoring Firmware Infinera" on first boot you will be presented with a prompt that asks you if you would like to initialize an empty database or restore an existing one. Enter empty at this prompt. The system will reboot and create a new configuration database. I have found that sometimes it will show this prompt multiple times. Keep typing empty until it boots up to the login prompt.

Users and Authentication

The default username and password combination is secadmin/Infinera1 which is the user you will log in with after a new firmware installation and database initialization. It will immediately ask you to change this password after you log in. Please keep a record of this rolling password for this user as the only way to recover from a lost password is to re-install the firmware from the ZIPL loader.

The default secadmin has no operating permissions in the config, it can only modify/create users. The first step is to create a new super user.

>en
#conf
conf# aaa authentication
conf# users username $USERNAME password $PASSWORD passwordaging 0 role MA;SA;NA;NE;PR;TT;RA;EA needtochangepwd false

$USERNAME and $PASSWORD are the plain-text username and password for your new super user. passwordaging should be set to 0 to prevent this users password expiring and requiring a new update every 90 days by default. You can also set this to something else in days.

Interface Configuration

Now that you have your super user set up, log out of secadmin and log into the new account. You must now configure the carriergroup for the interconnect between two Infinera systems.

Record the OCG number from the other Infinera you wish to attach to. This can either be found in the config or on the little screen on front. This will be the $MATCHING_OCGNUMBER in the config below. Keep in mind there are at least two different versions of Infinera, the 3C2 and 5C2, as denoted by the last three digits of the model number. These two versions cannot interoperate on the same OCG group number and are not compatible. You will need two of the same model number to continue.

 >en
 #conf
 conf# controller dwdm carriergroup 1/1
 conf# ocgnumber $MATCHING_OCGNUMBER
 conf# no shutdown

It will take time for this interface to initialize and show as active, give it 5-10 mins. OCh groups are enabled by default when the ocg group comes up, and should bring themselves up when the connection is initialized.

Troubleshooting the dwdm interface

To see light levels and interface status for the dwdm system interface execute the following command from enable mode.

show controller dwdm carriergroup 1/1
show controller dwdm carriergroup 1/1 statistics
show controller dwdm och

Configuring Device Interfaces

Insert a working Infinera programmed SFP+ module into both sides of the Infinera in the same port number on both. Execute the following commands on both machines to bring up the interface and allow traffic where $X is the interface number you have inserted the SFPP modules into.

conf# hw-module pluggable 1/2/$X start
conf# interface 1/2/$X no shut

Troubleshooting the SFPP interfaces

# show hw-module pluggable 1/2/$X
# show interface 1/2/$X

Remote Monitoring and Management

In order to configure the Infinera for remote management you first must put an IP address on the management interface of the controller card. This management interface is labeled "DCN" on the controller card portion of the Infinera chassis and is the top center ethernet port next to the USB port on the CX10E. The default IP address is 192.168.0.1/24.

>en
#conf
conf# interface management dcn ipv4
conf# dcnip $IP_ADDR
conf# dcngateway $IP_GW
conf# dcnmask $NET_MASK

After each command the system will ask you if you would like to proceed. Type no until you get to the dcnmask section, because it tries to validate the IP address and will fail compared to the default configuration if your new IP is in a different subnet.

SSH Connections

Once you have your IP address configured, you can SSH to the Infinera. The users you set up do not connect to the internal Linux PAM system, and instead Infinera has included a built-in gateway user that you can SSH to, which then loads the configuration shell and allows you to log in. To connect remotely over SSH, make sure your SSH client supports SSHv2 and type the following:

ssh cliuser@$IP_ADDR

There is no password for this cliuser, and this will load the login shell and you can proceed to login with the users you created earlier.

SNMP

To configure SNMP, execute the following commands

conf# no delete snmp-server
conf# snmp-server enable
conf# snmp-server community $SNMP_COMMUNITY 


conf# snmp-server host $SNMP_POLLER (optional, for security)

Other useful things (EDITED)

The serial terminal port is the standard RJ54 Cisco type, 115200 baud no stop bits

Reboot/shutdown is done through configure mode. Use

conf# reload warm

for a warm reboot and

conf# reload shutdown

before pulling the power