Decommission Managed Switches

Use this workflow to return a managed NVIDIA switch to a pre-ingestion baseline. After the switch reaches Decommissioning/Decommissioned, force-delete it to remove the control-plane records. The workflow resets both the NVOS data plane and the switch BMC.

This procedure uses nico-admin-cli against the Core gRPC API.

Prerequisites

• The site must be able to reach the managed switch.
• Make sure to save relevant credentials and know their factory default values before performing decommissioning in case of an error:
  • BMC credentials
  • NVOS credentials
  • Site-wide credentials
• The switch must be in the exact controller state Ready.
• No managed host in the same rack as the switch can be assigned to an instance.
• The site must be using the RMS component-manager backend.

Start decommissioning

Start the asynchronous workflow with the stable managed-switch ID:

nico-admin-cli -a <api-url> managed-switch decommission <switch-id>

Expected result: The command records the request and returns. The switch leaves Ready and enters Decommissioning.

Monitor decommissioning

nico-admin-cli -a <api-url> managed-switch show <switch-id>

Expected result: Successful decommissioning ends in Decommissioning/Decommissioned. If progress stops or errors persist, refer to Troubleshooting.

What the workflow changes

NICo performs these operations in order:

1. Suppresses Site Explorer for the switch BMC. Site Explorer will skip this endpoint during periodic exploration to avoid instability and authentication lockout.
2. Uses the RMS component-manager backend to submit and poll an NVOS factory-reset job to completion. The RMS reset wipes NVOS configuration, restarts the switch, and resets the NVOS password to factory default.
3. Suppresses DHCP for the switch’s NVOS interface. DHCP Request packets coming from this interface MAC are dropped.
4. Reboots the switch.
5. Creates a DHCP suppression for the switch BMC.
6. Uses Redfish to factory-reset the switch BMC.
7. Deletes the switch’s per-device secrets and convergence records.
8. Stops in Decommissioning/Decommissioned.

Resulting state

The workflow aims for the following state:

NICo suppresses discovery and responses from its own DHCP service for the device’s associated interfaces until you remove the suppressions with force-delete. Endpoints can remain reachable if they use static IP addresses or receive an address from an external DHCP server. Complete any required network changes or physical hardware removal before force-deleting the device records.

After decommissioning

When the switch reaches Decommissioning/Decommissioned, remove its control-plane records with the switch command in Force-delete after decommissioning.

If the switch is still physically present, Site Explorer ingests it from the reset state. If the hardware is not present, it does not come back and those records are gone.