Posts Tagged ‘UCS’

UCS: How to change ring buffer size and queues for adapters in UCS

14 Jun

Tags: adapter, Cisco, queues, ring buffer size, ring size, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS, Vblock | No Comments »

Here is the thing that you’ll probably never do but just in case you need to change ring buffer size you’ll know how to do this in Cisco UCS. 🙂
Before you make changes you should really know what and why you doing this as this is the last thing I would change as the default setting should work fine.

Login to UCSM
Select Servers tab an change Filter to Policies
Expand Adapter Policies you should see all the default adapter policies for Fibre, Ethernet and iSCSI
Do not change these as they might be used by multiple servers. Create new policy.
To create new policy right click on Adapter Policies and select the policy type Fibre, Ethernet or iSCSI
Enter policy Name and if you need you can also enter Description.
Enter the required Queue and Ring Size values and click OK.
To apply the new policy to the adapter change the Filter to Service Profiles.
Select service profile and the adapter the you want this policy to apply to.
On the right side change the Adapter Policy to a new one.
Click Save Changes

UCS: Renaming service profile in Cisco UCS 2.1

13 Jun

Tags: Cisco, rename, service profile, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS, Vblock | 1 Comment »

Starting from UCS version 2.1 there is an option to rename service-profiles and templates in UCS. If you’re running 2.0 or lower then the only way to rename is to clone service profile make some changes and delete the original, you can read about this here.

Rename service profile in UCSM GUI

Start UCSM and select Servers tab.
Change filter to Service Profiles or All so that service profiles are visible
Right click on the service profile you want to rename ans choose Rename Service Profile
Enter new name and click OK
You’ll get a dialog box that the profile was renamed. Click OK

Rename service profile in CLI

Use SSH client to connect to UCS CLI
You have to know where the service profile you want to rename is located. In my case it is in the root. Type:
scope org /
‘/’ is a location of service profile. If it is in sub-organization then you have to provide then name for it
To select service profile type:
scope service-profile name
‘name’ is a name of the service profile you selecting
to rename type:
rename-to newname
‘newname’ is the name you renaming profile to
you will be asked to confirm. Type ‘yes’
to commit changes type
commit-buffer

UCS: How to move or rename service profile in Cisco UCS

13 Jun

Tags: Cisco, move, rename, service profile, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS, Vblock | 1 Comment »

So UCS version 2.1 has added feature to rename service profile but what to do if you are running 2.0 or if you need to move service profile to different sub-organization?
Here are the steps you need to perform.
Before performing rename/move you’ll need to schedule maintenance window as during the procedure the blade will go down.

Open UCSM GUI and select Servers tab
Change Filter to Service Profiles or All so that service profiles are visible
From this point all actions are performed on the original service profile(the one you want to rename/move)
Right click on the service profile you want to rename/move and select Create a Clone
Enter the new name that you want to rename service profile to or if you are moving then enter the same name and change organization. Click OK. A clone should be created.

(more…)

UCS: Update firmware on Cisco UCS C200 server using Host Update Utility

06 Feb

Tags: c200, firmware upgrade, Host Update Utility, HUU, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

Here is a simple procedure how to update firmware on UCS C200 M2 server. The procedure should be no different on the other models of C series servers as they use Host Update Utility(HUU).
1. First you need to download the firmware for the upgrade. In this instance the server will be upgraded to 1.4(3p)5

Go to Cisco.com, select Support and All Dowloads
Choose Servers- Unified Computing and Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Standalone Server Software. Select your server model(in this case it is C200 M2)
From select Software type choose Unified Computing System (UCS) Server Firmware
Find the required version and download it(you’ll need to login). It will be iso file:

2. Mount HUU iso in CIMC (more…)

UCS: FSM: Unable to find Storage Controller Device for sys/chassis-4/blade-2/board/storage-SAS-1 to perform Image update

30 Jan

Tags: 4106, Cisco, Image update, SAS, UCS, Unable to find Storage Controller Device
Posted in Cisco, UCS | 1 Comment »

Here is a strange error that popped up recently.
After server reboot the blade got stuck on 47% of associating service profile.
Here is the error:

Remote Result: Service Unavailable
Remote Error Code: 4106
Remote Error Description: Unable to find Storage Controller Device for sys/chassis-4/blade-2/storage-SAS-1 to perform Image update

When looking in the KVM Console for the blade I can see that it was sitting in the screen below:

Here are the things that I’ve tried to fix this and none of these worked:
1. As it was saying about the image update for Storage adapter I though I’ll remove Host firmware policy from the service profile.
2. Next I created a new Host firmware policy but only added firmware SAS storage controller and chose different version than it had.
3. Remove and add service profile back

Here is what worked though:
Removed service profile from blade, re-acknowledged the blade added service profile back. After this the error was gone and the blade was booting normally.
The last step was to add old Hast firmware policy to the service profile and check if that brakes it again, but all worked as expected.
So I’m happy that the blade is back but cannot explain how and why this has happened.

UCS: F999616 [FSM:FAILED] communication service configuration(FSM:sam:dme:CommSvcEpUpdateSvcEp)

12 Jan

Tags: Cisco, F999616, FSM:FAILED, NTP, sys/svc-ext, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | 1 Comment »

In UCSM you see critical error:
Affected object: sys/svc-ext
Description: [FSM:FAILED] communication service configuration(FSM:sam:dme:CommSvcEpUpdateSvcEp)
Cause: fsm-failed
Code: F999616

The error itself is not very descriptive, so in order to find out what the problem is best it to look at UCSM show-tech support logs.To do that select Admin tab, select All and click on Create and Download Tech support.

(more…)

UCS: flashing cursor after installing Linux (RedHat, Suse), server would not boot

04 Jan

Tags: bios, blade, Cisco, flashing cursor after installing Linux, RedHat, Suse, UCS, uefi
Posted in Cisco, UCS | No Comments »

Here is an interesting thing that happens during Linux installation on Cisco UCS blade.
After installing Suse on Cisco UCS blade, the server would not boot and only flashing cursor is seen. Tried other version of Suse and even RHEL, still the same. This looked strange because I had installed Linux on UCS without any problems before.
There is a small thing that you need to be aware when doing installation. Make sure to add CD-rom in boot order in the the service profile and after you mount your ISO let the sever to pick it up itself. Do not press F6 and choose for it as this is where interesting thing happens.
When you let the server to pick the boot device it makes Linux installer to think that this server is running in UEFI mode.
When you press F6 and choose the boot device the installer thinks it is BIOS mode and when partitions are created, it messes things up there for after reboot you see flashing cursor.

UCS: waiting for flogi

04 Dec

Tags: CSCtu30454, CSCtz88841, CSCub40588, F0283, HBA, UCS, waiting for flogi
Posted in Cisco, Storage, UCS | 5 Comments »

Here is one very common error that you can see in UCS Manager. I’ve observed it in multiple UCS firmware versions and all times it was cosmetic and had no impact.

On the blade you’ll see a major error similar to this:
Description: fc VIF 6 /R A-1095 down, reason: waiting for flogi
Cause: link-down
Code: F0283

If you go to VIF paths on the blade you’ll see error ‘waiting for flogi’ on vHBA that has the problem.

Now as I mentioned already this is most likely cosmetic issue. So first you need to verify that this is really the case. (more…)

UCS: Warning: there are pending SEEPROM errors on one or more devices, failover may not complete

03 Dec

Tags: Cisco, CSCtu17144, Device Shared Storage Io Error, error accessing shared-storage, state: active with errors, UCS
Posted in Cisco, UCS | 3 Comments »

In UCS CLI after issuing command ‘show cluster state‘ a warning is received on one of the chassis.

UCS-B # show cluster state
Cluster Id: 0xf122a7f83dba11e0-0x9a4c123573c4f1c4

B: UP, PRIMARY
A: UP, SUBORDINATE

HA READY
Detailed state of the device selected for HA storage:
Chassis 1, serial: FOX1234567A, state: active
Chassis 2, serial: FOX1234567B, state: active
Chassis 5, serial: FOX1234567C, state: active with errors

Fabric B, chassis-seeprom local IO failure:
FOX1234567C READ_FAILED, error: TIMEOUT, error code: 10, error count: 7
Warning: there are pending SEEPROM errors on one or more devices, failover may not complete

In sam_techsupportinfo log you’ll see the following message
Creation Time: 2012-10-12T01:12:21.217
ID: 2712562
Description: device FOX1234567C, error accessing shared-storage
Affected Object: sys/mgmt-entity-B
Trigger: Oper
User: internal
Cause: Device Shared Storage Io Error
Code: E4196537

This is known Cisco Bug CSCtu17144 and here is what needs to be done

If the fault condition stays on or keeps being cleared and re-raised, try the following workarounds:
1. Reboot the IO module.
2. Remove and re-seat the IO module. Make sure the module is in contact with the backplane firmly.

I’ve had this problem couple times and resetting IO module was enough in both cases

UCS: configuration-failed; Code: F0170; connection-placement; There are not enough resources overall

02 Dec

Tags: Cisco, config Failure, configuration-failed, connection-placement, F0170, M81kr, There are not enough resources overall, UCS, UCSM
Posted in Cisco, UCS | 1 Comment »

Here is an interesting issue that I ran into with Cisco UCS blade.
I needed to move service profile from one blade to another. This is a process that should not give any problems but it did. Dissociation worked fine, but when I tried to associate the same profile with diferent blade I ran into problems.

The first thing I noticed is Config Failure error in Status:

The Configuration error was:
connection-placement
There are not enough resources overall
Not enough vHBAs available
Not enough cNICs available (more…)