IOS XR Introduction

Anilkumar Dantu
CCIE (22536)
• HTTS, Cisco Systems
IOS XR Introduction - Agenda
Carrier Grade NOS Features Expectation and OS
Concepts

Welcome to XR OS

XR OS packaging

XR OS installation

Configuration in XR OS

Troubleshooting in XR

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Carrier Grade NOS Feature Expectations

 Scalability
 High Availability
 Security
 Flexibility

It is not that IOS does not meet these expectations. Only extent to which it can meet
these expectations in future was getting challenged due to its OS structure.

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OS terminologies
 Operating system, Kernel , CPU , memory , I/O , Applications , processes etc

OS OS

Monolithic Kernel Micro kernel

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Welcome to XR OS
Distributed subsystems/processes
 Core OS Capabilities(QNX Based Micro Kernel)
- Protected process memory space
Control plane Data plane Management plane
- Preemptive Scheduling

Routing Policy

PFI Services
Control plane Data plane Management plane

Perf. Mgmt.
L2 Drivers

Interfaces
Control Plane

Netflow
XMLSNMP
OSPF

RIB IGMP

Alarm
LPTS
OSPFIS-IS
BGP

SSH
LPTS QoS

Perf. mgmt. XML

ACL
Policy

PIM
RIP

RIB

PFI Services

PFI
FIB

CLI
Control plane Data plane Management plane

Perf. Mgmt.
L2 Drivers

Interfaces
Control Plane

Netflow
XMLSNMP
RIB IGMP

Alarm
Host
OSPFIS-IS
RIP BGP

SSH
LPTSQoS
FIB ACL
IGMP PIM
Routing policy
IS-IS RIP

QoS FIB

SNMP CLI
Host services
Routing

L2 drivers

Interfaces

Netflow
Alarm
Host
BGP

SSH
ACL
PIM

CLI
- Plane separation & fault
nel
isolation k e r
cr o
Mi
Scheduling IPC mech. Memory mgmt. H/W abstraction

System services
Memory-protected microkernel

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Welcome to XR OS contd…

• More than 200+ Processes.

• Checkpoint support for process

Restart and process level Redundancy

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 IOS Vs XR OS
IOS XR
Kernel Monolithic Micro kernel
Memory Shared Protected
Scheduling of process Priority based- Non-preemptive Priority based- preemptive
Process stop/restart No Yes
Modular architecture No Yes
Services running mode Kernel mode Application/user space mode

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XR OS packaging
• Inline with its software architecture XR OS Software is available as a modular
package. On CCO we can download XR OS in form of Tar file eg : -
XR12000-iosxr-4.1.0.tar
• Once file is untarred – we see Cisco IOS XR Bootable Files, PIEs, and SMUs

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XR OS packaging contd…
• Cisco IOS XR Bootable Files, PIEs, and SMUs
• Files ending with .vm extension are bootable files. VM file contains – operating
system kernel , Base image , admin plane functions , routing & forwarding
bundles. VM files is used to boot router during fresh installation or as last resort
recovery. Installation of the .vm image file results in the installation of a number
of individual packages.
MGBL SEC
Optional
MPLS MCAST
• PIE (Package installation envelope) : Upgrade packages,
Routing
Optional additional packages
Line card

• SMU (software Maintainence units) : These are fixes Forwarding

Mandatory
Admin
Or patches for Bugs. Eg- c12-4.1.0.CSCto40258.pie Base
OS-MBI

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XR OS Installation
• In XR TURBO-BOOT refers to booting of Router from ROMON mode.

• TURBO-BOOT is required during IOS to XR conversion or recovery of router from ROMON mode.

• TURBO_BOOT steps:

- First step is to verify existing ROMON settings by querying it using “set” command
-you can use “unset Variable” command to clear existing settings
-Second step is to set the TURBOBOOT variable in ROMON to a non-volatile storage where .vm
file is stored.

- Last step is rommonB7> boot disk0:c12k-mini.vm-4.1.0

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XR OS Installation contd…

- With TURBOBOOT variable in ROMON set to “on” and boot command starts the TURBOBOOT
process. Here XR OS is loaded into memory & after verification of disk space ,OS is copied to the
disk.
- Once OS is copied to disk , boot variable is set to disk0: product_osmbi_4.1.0/product-rp.vm &
config register is set to 0x102. After that node is reloaded to boot from disk0: the new boot
variable. This completes the TURBOBOOT process.
- Once installation of XR OS is complete and we can verify the details using commands

show install active summary

show version
- Installation/booting with .vm file give only basic routing & forwarding capability. For additional
capability you need to install specific PIE files.
- Install add disk0:package_name.pie activate

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XR Hardware Requirements
• From XR OS installation procedure we have seen flash disk (disk0: , disk1:) is used extensively
for loading XR image , config files (running configs , roll back configs) , PIEs , SMUs etc. So
pulling out flash disk from running node will make node unresponsive/reload.

• Make sure RP cards has appropriate disk space available , RP & LC hardware are compatible
with XR as OS, and also verify the RP, LC has minimum firmware (romon, fpd) level to boot up in
XR.
• Many of the XR supporting nodes RP cards will have a harddisk (40GB or more) used basically
for archiving of logs, dump files , additional sw packages.

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XR Configuration & files
• - In XR there is no differentiation as startup-config & running config as in IOS.

• - In XR configuration is divided into Admin plane , share plane & local plane. Hence the
configuration file structure is also developed to support it.
• Here running configuration is stored in binary format (known as primary persistent configuration)
as compared to ASCII format of startup/running config in IOS. Configuration file stored in binary
format helps in faster loading during bootup. And added features of commit reference points,
rollback is made possible.

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XR Configuration (Two stage commit)

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Troubleshooting in XR
• RP & LC states.

• Logs & storing of wrapped logs,

• Show tech files

• Traces captures

• Process crash traceback decodes

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Thank you.