Posts Tagged ‘UCS’

UCS: Cisco FN – 63812

13 Jun

Tags: C200 M2, Cisco, FN - 63812, HDD, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS, Vblock | No Comments »

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

In CLI you cannot scope to storage adapter as non exists

show storageadapter

(more…)

UCS: Unable to communicate with Flexible Flash controller

28 May

Tags: Cisco, CSCuh33982, FlexFlash, timeout, UCS
Posted in UCS, Vblock, VMware | No Comments »

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:

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

Tags: chassis, decommission, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

After trying to decommission chassis the task never finishes. It gets stuck at Erasing chassis identity task:

FSM is stuck at 8% with error 403, Error Leaving fabric port-channel for port 1/16 (the port can be different)

Trying to Acknowledge or Remove Chassis is not successful.
(more…)

UCS: Running UCS Server Configuration Utility (SCU) Diagnostic on C series servers

18 Dec

Tags: Diagnostics, SCU, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

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

3. Restart the server and wait until it boots to SCU

4. Accept the License Agreement

5. In SCU expand Diagnostic Tools, select Quick Tasks and choose the test you want to run Quick or Comprehensive.

6. Confirm

7. You can see the status of the tests under Tests Summary and the results under Test log Summary.

8. Once finished click on Reboot button

UCS: After firmware upgrade B230 M1 blade is failing discovery at 4%

15 Dec

Tags: B230, discovery, firmware upgrade, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

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

no connection to MC endpoint

Error retrieving Server Params-MC Error(-6): Connection is closing

No DIMMs present

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

1. Check Firmware versions and see if all are as expected.

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

4. Activate the Board Controller with correct version and wait until activation is finished.

5. Reacknowledge the server

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

11 Dec

Tags: blade, service profile, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

After associating service profile to a blade it gets stuck in EFI Shell and association can not complete.
The KVM is showing EFI Shell

FSM status is stuck on Configure Apply Config

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.

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

Tags: blade, Cisco, Diagnostics, server, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

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.
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

GUI and CLI are self explanatory. memtest86+ is RAM testing utility.

(more…)

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

21 Jun

Tags: Catalyst, Cisco, MDS, Nexus, NTP, Timezone, UCS
Posted in Cisco, MDS, Nexus, UCS, Vblock | 2 Comments »

Cisco UCS

Open UCS manager.
Select Admin tab and change filter to Timezone Management
Select your timezone and click on green + to add NTP server details
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.

Cisco Nexus 5000 and 7000

Login using CLI to your Nexus switch
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
Verify that the configuration was set and packet are being received:sh ntp statistics peer ipaddr 192.168.101.81

sh clock

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

Login using CLI to your MDS or 1000v switch
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
Verify that the configuration was set and packet are being received:sh ntp statistics peer ipaddr 192.168.101.81

sh clock

Cisco Catalyst switches

Login using CLI to your Catalyst switch
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
Verify that the configuration was set and packet are being received:
sh ntp status

sh ntp associations detail

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:

open command prompt on NTP server
type:w32tm /query /status

By default Dispersion is set to 10 seconds. It cannot be more than 1 second for Cisco devices to sync
Open registry and find the following key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\W32Time\Config
Change the value of LocalClockDispersion from a to 0
Restart Windows Time service
The devices should start syncing.

UCS: LDAP nested groups are not working with UCS Manager

19 Jun

Tags: authentication, groups, LDAP, nested, UCS, UCS Manager
Posted in Cisco, UCS, Vblock | 1 Comment »

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

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).

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.

UCS: UCS Manager not accessible, (SWITCHOVER IN PROGRESS) (mgmt services state: INVALID) (HA NOT READY)

14 Jun

Tags: Cisco, SWITCHOVER IN PROGRESS, UCS, UCS Manager, UCSM
Posted in Cisco, UCS, Vblock | 2 Comments »

UCSM is not accessible when login into UCS cli and running show cluster extended-state command you receive the following:

ucs01-B# show cluster extended-state
Cluster Id: 0xe123456789123456-0xac12345678987456

Start time: Mon Apr 8 00:00:16 2013
Last election time: Tue Apr 22 18:50:00 2013

B: UP, SUBORDINATE, (Management services: SWITCHOVER IN PROGRESS)
A: UP, PRIMARY, (Management services: SWITCHOVER IN PROGRESS)

B: memb state UP, lead state SUBORDINATE, mgmt services state: INVALID
A: memb state UP, lead state PRIMARY, mgmt services state: INVALID
heartbeat state PRIMARY_OK

INTERNAL NETWORK INTERFACES:
eth1, UP
eth2, UP

HA NOT READY
Management services: switchover in progress on local Fabric Interconnect
Detailed state of the device selected for HA storage:
Chassis 1, serial: FOX12345678, state: active
Chassis 2, serial: FOX12345678, state: active

As we can see from the error the switchover is in progress but management services are not running on any of the FI’s so switchover cannot complete and this is the reason why you cannot access UCS Manager.
The blades running on this UCS infrastructure are not affected and should be running fine.

To fix the problem you need to reboot both Fabric Interconnects, one Fabric Interconnect at a time.

SSH to one of the Fabric Interconnects and type:
connect local-mgmt
reboot
Wait until the fabric interconnect reboots it can take 20-30 minutes.
Once it rebooted you should be able to open UCSM
In UCSM verify that the fabric that was rebooted has fully came up
SSH to the second Fabric Interconnect and reboot it
After Fabric Interconnect is up, SSH to UCSM IP and run:
show cluster extended-state
Verify that the cluster is in good state.