For the complete revision history, see Revision History.

New Features in Release 5.0(2g)

None.

New Features in Release 5.0(2e)

None.

New Features in Release 5.0(2d)

None.

New Features in Release 5.0(2c)

None.

New Features in Release 5.0(2b)

The following features were introduced or updated in Cisco HyperFlex Release 5.0(2b):

• HyperFlex License Info in Basic Support Bundle—Starting with HX Release 5.0(2b), the basic support bundle includes license information with registration and expiration status. For more information, see Cisco HX Data Platform Support Bundles in the HX Troubleshooting Reference Guide, 5.0.

• Secure Admin Shell Enhancement for Air-Gapped Clusters—For HX nodes licensed with Subscription License Reservations or Permanent License Reservations, customers now have the option to enable a persistent advance shell for troubleshooting, after a one-time Consent Token authentication with TAC. For more information, see Facilitating Controller VM Root Access for Air-Gapped Clusters in the HX Installation Guide for VMware ESXi, 5.0.

• Reduce CVM memory needed for C240 and C220 M6 NVME+AF 8T+15 T Configuration—For more information, see CPU Resource Reservation for Controller VMs and Memory Resource Reservation for Controller VMs in the HX Installation Guide for VMware ESXi, 5.0.

• Support for NVIDIA GPUs—HX Release 5.0(2b) supports the following NVIDIA GPUs: HX-GPU-A10, HX-GPU-A30, HX-GPU-A40, HX-GPU-A100-80 and HX-GPU-A16 on HyperFlex 240 and 245 M6 platform series. The Qualified FI/Server Firmware required is 4.2(2d). For more information see the HyperFlex Spec Sheets.

• 1.6TB NVMe Cache Support—Starting with HX Release 5.0(2b) available on Intel M5 and M6 All NVMe 220 and 240 configurations. Inter-operability of mixed cache drives available on HyperFlex M5 and M6 All Flash and All NVMe clusters with certain hardware configurations. For expansion of existing clusters or general information about interoperability of different drives, see HyperFlex Spec Sheets and the HX Drive Compatibility Guide.

• Support for Third-party 100G NIC card on HX M6 (Intel)—HX Release 5.0(2b) supports the following 100G NIC card: UCSC-P-I8D100GF (Intel E810CQDA2 2x100 GbE QSFP28).

New Features in Release 5.0(2a)

The following features were introduced or updated in Cisco HyperFlex Release 5.0(2a):

• Cisco HyperFlex HX245C/225C M6 All Flash/Hybrid Server Data Center Nodes support—

  • The Cisco HyperFlex HX245C M6SX All Flash and Hybrid Server Nodes extends the capabilities of Cisco’s HyperFlex portfolio in a 2U form factor with the addition of the AMD CPUs, 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with individual DIMM capacity points up to 256 GB. The maximum memory capacity for 2 CPUs is 8 TB (for 32 x 256 GB DDR4 DIMMs).

  • The HyperFlex HX225C M6S All Flash and Hybrid Server Nodes extends the capabilities of Cisco’s HyperFlex portfolio in a 1U form factor with the addition of the AMD CPUs, 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with DIMM capacity points up to 128 GB. The maximum memory capacity for 2 CPUs is 4 TB (for 32 x 128 GB DDR4 DIMMs).

  • See the Mixed Cluster Expansion Guidelines - Cisco HX Release 5.0(x) and HyperFlex Install and Upgrade Guides for more details.

    For ordering HyperFlex M6, please check the Cisco HyperFlex Systems Ordering and Licensing Guide, HyperFlex Data Sheets, and the HX Drive Compatibility Guide.

  • The Cisco HyperFlex HX245 M6 Edge All Flash and Hybrid Server Nodes extends the capabilities of Cisco’s HyperFlex portfolio in a 2U form factor with the addition of the AMD CPUs, 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with individual DIMM capacity points up to 256 GB. The maximum memory capacity for 2 CPUs 8 TB (32 x 256 GB DDR4 DIMMs).

  • The HyperFlex HX225 M6 Edge All Flash and Hybrid Server Nodes extends the capabilities of Cisco’s HyperFlex portfolio in a 1U form factor with the addition of the AMD CPUs, 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with DIMM capacity points up to 128 GB. The maximum memory capacity for 2 CPUs is listed here: 4 TB (32 x 128 GB DDR4 DIMMs).

• 15TB NVMe support— Available on Intel M6 All NVMe 220 and 240 configurations.

• "Diag" User in HX Shell — A new "diag" user for the HyperFlex command line interface, HX Shell, is introduced. The "Diag" user is a local user account with escalated privileges designed for troubleshooting. Log in to HX Shell remains restricted to the "admin" user account, and users must switch-user (su) to the "diag" user by providing the diag user password and passing a CAPTCHA test. For more information, see the Cisco HyperFlex Data Platform Administration Guide, Release 5.0.

• Software Encryption Support for Stretched Cluster— Provides File Level end-to-end data Encryption for confidentiality of data at-rest from theft of storage media for stretched cluster.

• Support for editing the MTU of the DR Replication Network— HX Connect provides an option to edit the MTU of the DR Replication Network without needing to clean up the replication configuration.

• Support for ESXi 7.0 U3—HXDP 5.0(2a) provides support for VMware ESXi 7.0 U3.

• iSCSI Support for HX Edge and DC-No-FI clusters—Adds iSCSI support to HX Edge and DC-no-FI clusters, in addition to existing iSCSI support on FI-based standard clusters which was introduced in HX 4.5(1a).

• HXCSI Release 1.2(3a)—Cisco HyperFlex Container Storage Interface (HXCSI) adds support for the following features compatible with HX 5.0(2a): creating software encrypted volumes, creating volume snapshots and using CHAP protection for volumes.

• Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory (DCPMM) support—in memory mode. HX 5.0(2a) provides support for Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory (DCPMM) memory in memory mode. DCPMM in memory mode only supports the VDI use case. DCPMM Memory mode is supported only through RPQ process

  • DCPMM memory mode is only supported on HyperFlex M6 - HX 220 and HX 240 series

  • Supported DCPMM memory mode DRAM:DCPMM ratio configuration is 1:2, 1:4 (only VDI workload)

  • Please contact Cisco Sales for RPQ form completion

New Features in Release 5.0(1c)

None.

New Features in Release 5.0(1b)

The following features were introduced or updated in Cisco HyperFlex Release 5.0(1b):

• Support for HyperFlex Software Encryption—HyperFlex Software Encryption provides File Level end-to-end data Encryption for confidentiality of data at-rest from theft of storage media. You can leverage the capability of Software Encryption to protect your data, when there is theft of drives, servers, or clusters. Intersight manages the keys natively with Intersight Key Manager. See Intersight HyperFlex Software Encryption for more details.

• UX Enhancements to HX Connect—An upgrade status appears in the Upgrade page providing the result of the last upgrade along with the versions that were upgraded (source and target versions for each component selected in the upgrade).

• Intel® Optane™ NVMe Cache support for DC-no-FI on M6 servers.

New Features in Release 5.0(1a)

The following features were introduced or updated in Cisco HyperFlex Release 5.0(1a):

• Cisco HX220c M6 and Cisco HX240c M6 HyperFlex nodes support—

  • The Cisco HyperFlex HX240C M6 All NVMe/All Flash/Hybrid Server Nodes extends the capabilities in a 2U form factor with the addition of the 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with DIMM capacity points up to 256 GB.

  • Cisco HyperFlex HX220C M6 All NVMe/All Flash/Hybrid Server Nodes extends the capabilities in a 1U form factor with the addition of the 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with DIMM capacity points up to 256 GB.

  • See the Mixed Cluster Expansion Guidelines - Cisco HX Release 5.0(x) and HyperFlex Install and Upgrade Guides for more details.

    For ordering HyperFlex M6, please check the Cisco HyperFlex Systems Ordering and Licensing Guide, HyperFlex Data Sheets, and the HX Drive Compatibility Guide.

• Support for a new M5 node data drive (PID: HX-SD76TBKNK9 ) has been added—This drive was introduced in the HXDP 5.0 release.

• Native Snapshots for iSCSI - Provides the ability to create iSCSI LUN snapshots. You can create a group of iSCSI LUNs as a "consistency group" in which all the iSCSI LUNs in the group are snapshotted at the exact same "IO time". For applications like databases, where database and log files reside on separate iSCSI LUNs, this feature helps create a consistent snapshot across both the LUNs. This feature is enabled via HxCLI and HyperFlex REST APIs. These APIs/CLIs help with various operations like creating a group of iSCSI LUNs, listing all the LUNs in a specified group, and creating, viewing and deleting snapshots. It also lets the user expose a read-only snapshot for external consumption.

• Updated VAAI snapshot offload mechanism without Sentinels – Supports a new VAAI interface for snapshot offload which will eliminate the need for Sentinel Snapshots.

Intersight-Powered Features

The following features are HyperFlex features that are enabled exclusively through Intersight.

Introduced or updated in Cisco HyperFlex Release 5.0(2a):

• Cisco HyperFlex Datacenter Without Fabric Interconnect (DC-No-FI)—Added support for NVMe cache in All Flash models, All NVMe hardware models, and 40/100 GE Networking with DC-No-FI HyperFlex clusters. You can deploy DC-No-FI for 3- 12 nodes using Cisco Intersight from the cloud. For more information see the Cisco HyperFlex Data Center without Fabric Interconnect Installation.

• Intersight support for NIC-based-HX—The 10 or 25 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) switch NIC-based topology is available for 2-, 3-, and 4-Node topologies. It provides a fully redundant design that protects against switch (if using dual or stacked switches), link and port failures. For more information see the Cisco HyperFlex Edge Deployment Guide, Release 5.0(x)

New 1.6TB NVMe cache drive is supported in HX 5.0(2b) on M5 and M6 All NVMe clusters.

HX 5.0(2b) supports the ability to handle inter-operability of mixed cache drives on HyperFlex M5 and M6 All Flash and All NVMe clusters with certain hardware configurations:

• Existing cluster with 375G cache can be expanded with 1.6TB cache.

• New cluster creation with heterogeneous cache drives needs a two-step approach for a minimum of 4 node cluster: (Step 1) cluster creation with minimum three of lesser capacity 375G cache; (Step 2) cluster expansion with 1.6TB cache. New heterogeneous cluster with less than three 375G cache is not supported. Upgrade to homogenous cluster with 1.6TB cache is recommended.

For expansion of existing clusters or general information about interoperability of different drives, see HyperFlex Spec Sheets and the HX Drive Compatibility Guide.

Important

Do not upgrade HyperFlex Stretch clusters to HXDP 5.0(2b) See Software Advisory https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/SA/sw-advisory-hyperflex-release-5-0-2b.html

• Hyper-V is supported exclusively on M5 severs.

For HX Edge M6 Support:

• OVA based installer does not support HX Edge M6. Use Intersight for lifecycle management

• HX datacenter clusters can be deployed using either OVA or Intersight installer.

General Guidelines:

• HX240c M6 is not able to use the additional slots if combined in a cluster with M5 or M4 nodes.

• HX220c M6 uses a maximum of 6 capacity disks (2 disk slots to remain empty) when mixed with HX220-M4.

• All servers must match the form factor (220/240), type (Hybrid/AF), security capability (Non-SED only) and disk configuration (QTY, capacity, and non-SED) across the cluster.

Mixed Cluster Expansion Options: Supported

• Expanding existing M4 or M5 or M4+M5 cluster with M6 converged nodes is supported.

• Expanding existing mixed M4/M5/M6 cluster with M4 or M5 or M6 converged nodes is supported.

• Adding any supported compute-only nodes is permitted with all M4, M5, M6 and mixed M4/M5/M6 clusters using the HX Data Platform 5.0 or later Installer. Some example combinations are listed here, many other combinations are possible.

• Only expansion workflow is supported to create a mixed cluster (Initial cluster creation with mixed M4/M5/M6 servers is not supported).

Mixed Cluster Expansion Options: Not Supported

• Expanding existing M6 cluster with M4 or M5 converged nodes is NOT supported

• Initial cluster creation with mixed M4/M5/M6 servers is not supported.

• Mixing Intel and AMD M6 is not supported.

The following security issues are resolved:

HXDP Release 5.0(x)

The following list all non-security HXDP, Hyper-V and HXCSI caveats for the Cisco HyperFlex Release 5.0.