Release Notes for Cisco Integrated Management Controller, Release 1.0(2)

Table Of Contents

Release Notes for Cisco Integrated Management Controller, Release 1.0(2)

Contents

Introduction

Hardware and Software Interoperability

Software Features

Firmware Files

System Requirements

Updating the Firmware

Known Behaviors

Resolved Caveats

Open Caveats

Caveats from Previous Releases

Related Documentation

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

Release Notes for Cisco Integrated Management Controller, Release 1.0(2)

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First Published Date: February 23, 2010

Last Updated: September 15, 2011

Part Number:OL-21868-01

This document describes the new features, system requirements, and caveats for CIMC Release 1.0(2), as well as any related firmware or drivers. Use this document in conjunction with the documents listed in the "Related Documentation" section.

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Note We sometimes update the documentation after original publication. Therefore, you should also review the documentation on Cisco.com for any updates.

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Table 1 shows the online change history for this document.

Table 1 Online History Change 

Part Number	Revision	Date	Description
OL-21868-01	A0	January 23, 2010	Release notes initial release.

Contents

This document includes the following sections:

•Introduction

•System Requirements

•Updating the Firmware

•Known Behaviors

•Open Caveats

•Caveats from Previous Releases

•Related Documentation

•Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

Introduction

Cisco® UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers extend unified computing innovations to an industry-standard form factor to help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. Designed to operate both in standalone environments and as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System™1, the series employs Cisco technology to help customers handle the most challenging workloads. The series incorporates a standards-based unified network fabric, Cisco VN-Link virtualization support, and Cisco Extended Memory Technology. It supports an incremental deployment model and protects customer investments with a future migration path to unified computing.

The Cisco UCS C250 M1 Extended-Memory Rack-Mount Server is a two-socket, two-rack-unit (2RU) rack-mount server featuring patented Cisco Extended Memory Technology (Figure 1). It is designed to increase performance and capacity for demanding virtualization and large-data-set workloads. It also can reduce the cost of smaller memory footprints. This server is built for virtualized workloads in enterprise data centers, service provider environments, and virtual desktop hosting. The system also helps increase performance for large-data-set workloads, including database management systems and modeling and simulation applications. Applications that are memory bound today will benefit by the 384 GB of addressable memory that the Cisco UCS C250 M1 server offers.

The Cisco UCS C210 M1 General-Purpose Rack-Mount Server is a general-purpose, two-socket, two-rack-unit (2RU) rack-mount server housing up to 16 internal small form-factor (SFF) SAS or SATA disk drives for a total of up to 8 terabytes (TB) of storage (Figure 1). The Cisco UCS C210 M1 server is designed to balance performance, density, and efficiency for workloads requiring economical, high-capacity, reliable, internal storage. Based on quad-core Intel® Xeon® 5500 series processors, the server is built for applications including virtualization, network file servers and appliances, storage servers, database servers, and content-delivery servers.

The Cisco UCS C200 M1 High-Density Rack-Mount Server is a high-density server with balanced compute performance and I/O flexibility (Figure 1). This price-to-performance optimized two-socket, one-rack-unit (1RU) rack-mount server is designed to balance simplicity, performance, and density for web infrastructure and mainstream data center, small-office, and remote-office applications. Its single-rack-unit size makes it useful for service providers offering dedicated or multi-tenant hosting, and its economical price makes it well suited to the appliance market.

C-series servers are capable of standalone management separate from the integrated system, using a simple Web-based interface called Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC).

Hardware and Software Interoperability

For detailed information about storage switch, operating system, adapter, adapter utility, and storage array interoperability, see the Hardware and Software Interoperability Matrix for your release located at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10477/prod_technical_reference_list.html

Software Features

Configure Boot Order

This feature is new for the C250 server. Click on the Configure Boot Order link on the Summary page. The Configure Boot Order dialog box appears. Use the dialog box to configure a new boot order for the server.

BIOS Version Field

This feature is new for the C250 server. This field displays the current BIOS version installed on the server.

Shipping Mode

The Shipping Mode feature is only available on the C250 C-Series rack mount server. Shipping mode should only be used to connect to the CIMC the first time for initial setup. While in this mode many networking settings cannot be configured and may not be reported accurately.

Firmware Files

The CIMC Release 1.0(2) includes the following software files:

Table 2 Files in this Release  

File name(s)	CCO Software Type
upd-pkg-c200-m1-cimc.1.0.2.bin upd-pkg-c250-m1-cimc.1.0.2.bin	Unified Computing System (UCS) Integrated Management Controller Firmware (select as appropriate for your hardware) Also available in a zip file inside the software container file.
c200-m1-bios.1.0.4.zip c250-m1-bios.1.0.6.zip	UCS Server BIOS The ZIP archive contains many files. Please refer to OS-dependent BIOS upgrade instructions in the following files: windows/ReleaseNotes.txt linux/iflash32.tar.gz (the file name is ReleaseNotes.txt) uefi/ReleaseNotes.txt
c200-m1-sasctlr-1064E.4EB3.zip c200-m1-sasctlr-8708EM2.1078.zip c200-m1-sasctlr-9261.2108.zip c250-m1-sasctlr-3081E-3081e.zip	UCS Server RAID controller firmware (unchanged since 1.0(1))
C200M1-1.0.2.zip C250M1-1.0.2.zip	UCS Software Container for Rack Mount Servers (contains BIOS and CIMC)
c2xx-m1-drivers-1.0.2.iso	UCS Tools and Drivers Bundle

System Requirements

The management client must meet or exceed the following minimum system requirements:

•Sun JRE 1.6 or later.

•Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher or Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or higher

•The Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 or higher operating systems

Updating the Firmware

To update the CIMC firmware, refer to the "Firmware Management" chapter in the software configuration documents.

Known Behaviors

Server OS

Symptom    CIMC cannot see a USB drive mapped with virtual media.

Workaround   The kernel needs to be rebuilt with max_luns option set to 255 in modprobe.conf. For full details from Red Hat, refer to the article at http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-3293 (CSCtd03150)

Symptom    Unable to install VMware on ICH10 SATA controller in SW RAID mode. This only affects loading VMware on a ICH10 SATA Controller in SW RAID mode. RHEL & SUSE are ok when the correct drivers are loaded.

Workaround   None. (CSCtb49393)

Resolved Caveats

The following section lists the caveats resolved in this release.

BIOS

•CSCte79916 and CSCte79956: When you enter BIOS setup by providing a user mode password, you are only allowed to change the time, date and user password.

CIMC

•CSCtf03462 KVM Keyboard input no longer freezes and requires a reset after a CIMC reboot.

•CSCte19257 When a configuration uses a large number of PCIE devices with Option ROM, a device's legacy Option ROM will be loaded by the BIOS.

•CSCtb84361 When a USB keyboard or mouse is hot plugged during an Option ROM initialization or configuration screen, it will work during BIOS POST.

•CSCtd79490 After replacing the CMOS battery and reconnecting AC power, the system will restart.

•CSCtd82129 A system configured to generate SNMP notification on hard drive removal will correctly generate the notification.

•CSCtc82943 When launching the KVM console with Microsoft Internet Explorer, the browser no longer sends the message "Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found."

•CSCtd65297 At power up, the P1V1_IOH, P1V5_IOH, P1V8_IOH, P0V75_DDR3_P1, or P0V75_DDR3_P2 voltage sensors no longer report o a false value read in the first scan, making the System Fault LED glow or blink Amber for 10 - 20 seconds.

•CSCtc07664 If a KVM window is closed while virtual media is open and a CD or DVD is mapped, Windows will now release a lock on the CD or DVD that was shared through virtual media and can eject the disc.

•CSCte37287 The CIMC GUI no longer times out when loading the summary page.

•CSCtc74176 The CIMC GUI and CLI now show the configured boot order and the actual boot order from the previous boot. The actual boot order also shows the order of the boot devices, not just order of the device types.

•CSCtd30040 Filtering operations are now supported for the system Error log.

•CSCtd38085 Special characters such as "$" are now allowed while setting default password via CIMC Utility.

•CSCtd15402 The screen is no longer blank during BIOS POST.

•CSCtd95395 C210M1 - With 16 HDDs the SMBIOS table now shows the HDD boot order info

•CSCte18670 The default Baud rate is 9.6K in BIOS once console redirection is enabled.

Open Caveats

This section lists the open caveats for this release. Unless otherwise noted, the caveats are for all rack server platforms.

Misc

Symptom    The following message appears after installation or upgrade to ESX 4.0 vSphere:
Error:TSC: 1137350434cpu0 :0)NUMA : 827 Signficant imbalance between NUMA nodes detected. Performance may be impacted.:

Workaround   There are two possible workarounds.

Option 1: Ensure that memory configuration is equal across both processors. Ensure that there are equal amounts of DIMMs of the same size and speed inserted in the DIMM sockets.

Option 2: Reboot system and enter BIOS setup by pressing F2. Go to Advanced-->Memory Configuration-->Memory RAS --> Performance Configuration--> and change NUMA Optimized to Disabled. Press F10 to save and reboot. (CSCtc33846)

Symptom    The firmware update freezes at downloading stage and at 5% completion. This may occur if there is an interruption to the firmware download while installing firmware through the browser client. Examples of interruptions include: closing the browser, clicking on the browser's stop button, clicking on the browser's refresh button, and network errors.

Workaround   If the download appears to have frozen, the easiest workaround is to log out then try the firmware installation again. If the browser has already been closed and you cannot log out, then wait until the session expires and try again. (CSCtb70038)

BIOS

Symptom    While installing Windows via VMedia the default drive chosen was F drive. To avoid this Vmedia was disabled. On Cisco UCS C200 M1 High-Density Rack-Mount Servers VMedia is disabled by default.

Workaround   Please re- enable VMedia. (CSCte80521)

Symptom    At times due to slow network bandwidth, a firmware update using a browser doesn't show the progress bar.

Workaround   Ideally, the download time should not be greater than 10 minutes. If the update takes longer than that to download, try to update the image by uploading it to a nearby TFTP server. (CSCtf03964)

Symptom    The front panel COM port does not work.

Workaround   Use the rear panel COM port. (CSCte96760)

Symptom    Faulty DIMM size and speed are reported in SMBIOS Type 17. The expected behavior is to report "No DIMM" for failed DIMM slots.

Workaround   The user should not assume all DIMMs reported through SMBIOS type 17 are working. Instead the user should go to BIOS setup to find out the working and failing DIMMs. Also the user can retrieve the failing DIMM information from the system error log. (CSCtd44151)

Symptom    When VT-UTF8 is selected as a terminal type in BIOS Setup, junk characters are seen on the terminal.

Workaround   Do not select VT-UTF8 as terminal type. Use the default VT100 mode. (CSCtb25124)

Symptom    Installation of any UEFI Aware Operating System may result in a complete system failure.

Workaround   No workaround exists. We do not support UEFI aware Operating Systems. (CSCtd71780)

CIMC

Symptom    After resetting a C250 M1 to factory defaults, if the network cable is connected to management port 2, the restored IP doesn't ping other addresses. Factory default mode is not supposed to be used for normal operation. If ethernet management port 2 is used it gets a static IP used by Cisco even if DHCP is enabled.

Workaround   Connect to management port 1 instead. (CSCte93298)

Symptom    After Generating the Self Certificate via CLI and updating the same Certificate, you are unable to reconnect using SSH.

Workaround   Reboot CIMC from the GUI and then login from ssh. (CSCte97884)

Caveats from Previous Releases

The following caveats were opened in UCS software release 1.0(1d) and are still unresolved:

Misc

Symptom    The following message appears after installation or upgrade to ESX 4.0 vSphere:
Error:TSC: 1137350434cpu0 :0)NUMA : 827 Signficant imbalance between NUMA nodes detected. Performance may be impacted.:

Workaround   There are two possible workarounds.

Option 1: Ensure that memory configuration is equal across both processors. Ensure that there are equal amounts of DIMMs of the same size and speed inserted in the DIMM sockets.

Option 2: Reboot system and enter BIOS setup by pressing F2. Go to Advanced-->Memory Configuration-->Memory RAS --> Performance Configuration--> and change NUMA Optimized to Disabled. Press F10 to save and reboot. (CSCtc33846)

BIOS

Symptom    Installation of any UEFI Aware Operating System may result in a complete system failure.

Workaround   No workaround exists. We do not support UEFI Aware Operating Systems. (CSCtd71780)

Web UI

Symptom    On completion of the "Recover Corrupt BIOS" wizard, clicking on the "Finish" button brings up a dialog with the message "BIOS recovery may not be in a state in which it can be canceled. Attempt to cancel anyway?"

Workaround   The message is shown erroneously. Simply click "Yes" to close the message dialog. (CSCtd84141)

Symptom    A name without domain part used during login in a scenario where authentication fails over from AD to CIMC does not succeed.

Workaround   To connect to an AD server you need to use the full form of a user name (like bob@domain.com, even if domain.com had been specified in AD configuration). If this fails because the AD server is unreachable then login with the partial name. (CSCtd74258)

Symptom    The firmware update freezes at downloading stage and at 5% completion. This may occur if there is an interruption to the firmware download while installing firmware through the browser client. Examples of interruptions include: closing the browser, clicking on the browser's stop button, clicking on the browser's refresh button, and network errors.

Workaround   If the download appears to have frozen, the easiest workaround is to log out then try the firmware installation again. If the browser has already been closed and you cannot log out, then wait until the session expires and try again. (CSCtb70038)

CIMC

Symptom    Linux mouse emulation is calculated, unlike Windows mouse emulation. There are situations when the KVM Linux mouse emulation gets out of sync with the host's mouse: Novell/SUSE's install DVD for SLES doesn't include mouse acceleration. The X setup for the install DVD is very basic, unlike RHEL's. A mouse will work on SLES once it is installed but lags during the installation.On Linux, you can switch between graphical and text mod using the Ctrl-Alt-F1 for text and Ctrl-Alt-F7 to go back to graphical mode. The KVM Linux mouse emulation sometimes gets out of sync when switching between modes.

Workaround   When the mouse gets out of sync in Linux, the user must force KVM to recalculate it. There are two ways to force KVM to recalculate the Linux mouse: 1) In KVM, go to the Tools->Session Options->Mouse tab and press the button for Linux Mouse Acceleration and then press "Apply" and "OK". If the Linux Mouse Acceleration is already selected, the user can still press "Apply" and then "OK" to force it to recalculate. 2) Move the mouse out of the KVM window to the right of the window and back into the KVM window, forcing it to recalculate the mouse position again. (CSCtc12265)

Related Documentation

The configuration information for this release is identical to CIMC Release 1.0(1), please refer to:

•Cisco UCS C-Series Servers Integrated Management Controller CLI Configuration Guide, Release 1.0(1x)

•Cisco UCS C-Series Servers Integrated Management Controller Configuration Guide, Release 1.0(1x)

•Cisco UCS C-Series Servers Integrated Management Controller CLI Command Reference, Release 1.0(1x)

The following related documentation is available for the Cisco Unified Computing System:

•Cisco UCS C-Series Servers Documentation Roadmap

•Cisco UCS Site Preparation Guide

•Regulatory Compliance and Safety Information for Cisco UCS

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see the monthly What's New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html

Subscribe to the What's New in Cisco Product Documentation as an RSS feed and set content to be delivered directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service. Cisco currently supports RSS Version 2.0.

This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the "Related Documentation" section.

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Release Notes for Cisco UCS C-Series Manager
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