Archive for the ‘UCS’ Category

UCS: Cisco FN – 63812


13 Jun

Cisco has release a field notice FN – 63812 on 4th of June for their servers that are using Seagate hard drives.
According to Cisco some Seagate drives with specific level of firmware might not respond to requests.
There is a list of drives and instructions how to identify these drives. Unfortunately if you have C220 M2 server with integrated controller like LSI 1064E the instruction are not going to work as the drives are not visible in CIMC.

In CIMC there is nothing listed under Storage tab

CIMC/Storage

CIMC/Storage

In CLI you cannot scope to storage adapter as non exists

show storageadapter

show storageadapter

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UCS: Unable to communicate with Flexible Flash controller


28 May

For all of you who are using Cisco UCS C220 M3 server and Flexible Flash controller with SD card beware that there is a bug in firmware prior to 1.5(3a)

The problem shows up as timeout error for FlexFlash controller. The interesting part is even though there is a problem with the FlexFlash, CIMC still is showing that overall Server Status as good:
Once you log-in into CIMC you will not see that there is a problem:

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No Errors

but once you click on Storage tab you’ll get error message:

Error: Unable to communicate with Flexible Flash controller: operation ffCardsGet, status ERROR_TIMEOUT

In the logs you’ll see: (more…)

UCS: Chassis Decommission is stuck


27 Dec

After trying to decommission chassis the task never finishes. It gets stuck at Erasing chassis identity task:
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FSM is stuck at 8% with error 403, Error Leaving fabric port-channel for port 1/16 (the port can be different)
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Trying to Acknowledge or Remove Chassis is not successful.
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UCS: Running UCS Server Configuration Utility (SCU) Diagnostic on C series servers


18 Dec

UCS Server Configuration Utility (SCU) allows user to configure the server and also run diagnostics tests.

Do the following to run SCU diagnostics tests:

1. Download SCU from Cisco.com
2. Login to CIMC of the server and map the SCU ISO image
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3. Restart the server and wait until it boots to SCU
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4. Accept the License Agreement
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5. In SCU expand Diagnostic Tools, select Quick Tasks and choose the test you want to run Quick or Comprehensive.
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6. Confirm
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7. You can see the status of the tests under Tests Summary and the results under Test log Summary.
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8. Once finished click on Reboot button
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UCS: After firmware upgrade B230 M1 blade is failing discovery at 4%


15 Dec

After upgrading B230 M1 blade it gets stuck in discovery at 4% and is showing following errors:

no connection to MC endpoint
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Error retrieving Server Params-MC Error(-6): Connection is closing

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No DIMMs present

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The errors can be rotating but it is stuck at 4%.

1. Check Firmware versions and see if all are as expected.
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2. Reset CIMC and after this is done Reacknowledge the server.
3. Check the firmware versions of the blade again. The Running Board Controller version is set to 00000000
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4. Activate the Board Controller with correct version and wait until activation is finished.
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5. Reacknowledge the server

UCSPE 2.2(1bPE1) is out


15 Dec

UCSPE 2.2(1bPE1) is out. Get it here.

UCS: Blade is stuck in EFI Shell, service profile association stuck


11 Dec

After associating service profile to a blade it gets stuck in EFI Shell and association can not complete.
The KVM is showing EFI Shell
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FSM status is stuck on Configure Apply Config
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The problem could be because the service profile does not have all the required configuration. Have a look at Status under General tab to see what is the error.
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In this case there were no MACs or WWPNs defined. CNA cards must have these defined as they do not have them burned in.

 

Using Cisco UCS Blade Server Diagnostics


15 Nov

Cisco has released Cisco UCS Blade Server Diagnostics.
It’s an ISO file that you boot your blade from and there you can run a series of test to find out if there are any problems with hardware.

To run UCS diagnostics do the following:

  • Download ISO file from cisco.com you’ll need login first. At the time of writing the only version available is 1.0.1a
  • Login to UCS Manager and open the KVM console on the blade that you want to test(the blade must be associated with service profile and CD-ROM must be present in Boot Order at the top of it)
  • Select Virtual Media tab, click on Add Image button, locate and select Cisco UCS Blade Server Diagnostic ISO file that you downloaded. Make sure that Mapped box is ticket next to ISO file.
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  • Restart the server. The server should start booting form ISO file
  • You’ll be prompted to choose from 3 options(GUI, CLI, memtest86+) if you do not choose in 10sec the blade will into GUI
    2
    GUI and CLI are self explanatory. memtest86+ is RAM testing utility.

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Configuring NTP and Timezones on Cisco devices(UCS, MDS, Nexus, Catalyst) in Vblock


21 Jun

Cisco UCS

  1. Open UCS manager.
  2. Select Admin tab and change filter to Timezone Management
  3. Select your timezone and click on green + to add NTP server details
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  4. Enter IP address of your NTP server and click OK. You can add FQDN of the server but then make sure that DNS is configured in UCS Manager.
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Cisco Nexus 5000 and 7000

  1. Login using CLI to your Nexus switch
  2. To configure your timezone and NTP server details:
    conf t
    clock timezone UTC 0 0
       <== Change your name of timezone from UTC. First 0 is for Hours offset and the second is for minutes offset
    ntp server 192.168.101.81 use-vrf management
  3. Verify that the configuration was set and packet are being received:sh ntp statistics peer ipaddr 192.168.101.81
    7
    sh clock

Cisco Nexus 1000v and MDS switchesLogin to CLI to your Nexus switch

  1. Login using CLI to your MDS or 1000v switch
  2. Configure timezone and NTP server details:
    conf t
    clock timezone UTC 0 0    
    <== Change your name of timezone from UTC. First 0 is for Hours offset and the second is for minutes offset
    ntp server 192.168.101.81
  3. Verify that the configuration was set and packet are being received:sh ntp statistics peer ipaddr 192.168.101.81
    5
    sh clock

Cisco Catalyst switches

  1. Login using CLI to your Catalyst switch
  2. Configure timezone and NTP server details:
    conf t
    clock timezone UTC 0 0    
    <== Change your name of timezone from UTC. First 0 is for Hours offset and the second is for minutes offset
    ntp server 192.168.101.81
  3. Verify that the configuration was set and packet are being received:
    sh ntp status
    4
    sh ntp associations detail
    6
    sh clock

Beware that it may take some time for clock to synchronize on all devices.
If you are using Microsoft Windows w32tm service for NTP then on your NTP server you need to change LocalClockDispersion to 0 seconds or Cisco devices will not sync.
To check the current setting:

  1. open command prompt on NTP server
  2. type:w32tm /query /status
    8
    By default Dispersion is set to 10 seconds. It cannot be more than 1 second for Cisco devices to sync
  3. Open registry and find the following key
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\W32Time\Config
  4. Change the value of LocalClockDispersion from a to 0
  5. Restart Windows Time service
  6. The devices should start syncing.

UCS: LDAP nested groups are not working with UCS Manager


19 Jun

So you have your LDAP autentication configured in Cisco UCS manager.
You map group in UCS to LDAP group and add user to this LDAP group
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Try to login with this user account to UCSM. Everything is working as expected.
You remove the user from LDAP group add it to another LDAP group and add this Group to LDAP group that is mapped to UCS group(in other words you nest groups).
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When trying to login again, authentication fails.

This is a known behaviour of UCS and is explained in more detail under bug id CSCtt44185. With UCS, nested groups should not be used, each group in LDAP must be mapped to a group in UCS.

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