Facing this error? Let me guess: Ports 03, 05, 06, 08, 09 and 12 are alerting? You have a Quarter Rack? Have recently installed Exadata plugin to version 12.1.0.3 or higher?
Don’t panic!
This is probably related to Bug 15937297 : EM 12C HAS ERRORS CABLE IS PRESENT ON PORT ‘N’ BUT IT IS POLLING FOR PEER PORT. The full message might be like “Cable is present on Port 6 but it is polling for peer port. This could happen when the peer port is unplugged/disabled“.
In fact, the bug was closed as not a bug. 🙂
As part of the 12.1.0.3 Exadata plugin, the IB switch ports are now checked for non-terminated cables. So these errors ‘polling for peer port’ are the expected behavior. Once ‘polling for peer port’ is an enhanced feature of the 12.1.0.3 plugin, this explains why you most likely did not see these errors until you upgraded the OMS to 12.1.0.2 and then updated the plugins.
In Quarter Racks, the following ports 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 12 are usually cabled ahead of time, but not terminated. In some racks port 32 may also be unterminated. Checking for incident in OEM you might see something like this image:
More“Infiniband Error: Cable is present on Port “X” but it is polling for peer port”