Cisco MDS: Fabric is already locked

When you encounter a fabric lock, because you accidentally left the GUI or CLI without committing the changes, you can try the following to clear the lock and retry to apply your changes:

  1. run ‘show cfs lock’ to see who lock`s the fabric
  2. run ‘clear device-alias session’ to clear the lock when you were doing zoning activities

Instead of the “clear device-alias session” in line 2, another common possibility to get the lock cleared is:

  • ‘clear ivr session’ (when you were in the middle of IVR activities)

Other locks can occur, but the device-alias and ivr are probably the most common. At least the ones that I encountered so far.

Sometimes a lock error pops up when opening a VSAN in DCNM, saying that the fabric is locked from switch ABC. In that case, log on to switch ABC and type (if nobody is actually zoning at that moment):

  • clear zone lock vsan 123

This will clear the lock from the entire fabric only if issued on initiating switch

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