Return Material Authorization

With the Return Material Authorization (RMA) process, you can replace a faulty device with a new device that has the same configuration.

The high-level process is as follows. For specific steps and commands, see Replace a Faulty Device.

  1. Verifying prerequisites.
    • Periodic configuration backup must be enabled on all devices that may need RMA. This prerequisite ensures that you have the latest configuration file to be used for recovery.
    • Maintenance mode must be enabled upon reboot on all devices.
  2. Removing the faulty device and replacing it with the new device. Ports on this device must be administratively up and online.
  3. Configuring the new device with the same management IP address and credentials as the old device.
  4. Starting the RMA process from the command line or with the REST API.
    Note

    Note

    As a best practice, run the efa inventory rma execute command with the configuration backup ID so that the configuration is properly restored. If you run the command without the backup ID, you will need to manually update the configuration on the new device.
    During the RMA process, the following actions occur:
    • The device boots up in maintenance mode.
    • EFA updates the device ID for the connection details in the database.
    • Maintenance mode is initiated if the device is not already in maintenance mode.
    • EFA replays the backed-up configuration specified by the config-backup-id parameter of the efa inventory rma execute command.
    • EFA begins the drift reconcile process, which involves device discovery, device update, and fabric and tenant reconciliation. For more information, see Drift and Reconcile.
      Note

      Note

      If the RMA command fails during this stage, you can manually run the drift reconcile process from the CLI. If the RMA process fails for any other reason, restart the RMA process.
    • When drift reconcile is complete, the device is taken out of maintenance mode.
    • During the RMA process, EFA health checks are deactivated and RASlog does not trigger drift reconcile.
  5. Installing the HTTPS or OAuth2 certificate on the new device.
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RMA work flow
Diagram that depicts the work flow presented in the text