Release Notes for Cisco UCS C-Series Software, Release 2.0(2)
Overview of Cisco UCS C3160 M3 Rack Servers
Hardware and Software Interoperability
Best Practices to Configure Cisco UCS 3X60 RAID Controllers
Upgrading BIOS and Cisco IMC Firmware
Best Practices to Install VMWare
Supported Features in Release 2.0(2)
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
First Published Date: September 26, 2014
This document describes the new features, system requirements, open caveats and known behaviors for C- series software release 2.0(2) including Cisco Integrated Management Controller software and any related BIOS, firmware, or drivers. Use this document in conjunction with the documents listed in the “Related Documentation” section.
Note We sometimes update the documentation after original publication. Therefore, you should also review the documentation on Cisco.com for any updates.
Table 1 shows the online change history for this document.
This section includes the following sections:
The Cisco UCS C3160 Rack Server is a modular, high-density server ideal for service providers, enterprises, and industry-specific environments. The Cisco UCS C3160 addresses the need for highly scalable computing with high-capacity local storage. Designed for a new class of cloud-scale applications, it is simple to deploy and excellent for unstructured data repositories, media streaming, and content distribution.
Extending the capability of the Cisco UCS portfolio, the new Cisco UCS C3160 Rack Server is an advanced, modular rack server with extremely high storage density. Based on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 series, it offers up to 360 TB of local storage in a compact 4-rack-unit (4RU) form factor.
Because all its hard-disk drives are individually hot-swappable, and with its built-in enterprise-class Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) redundancy, the Cisco UCS C3160 helps you achieve the highest levels of data availability.
Unlike typical high-density rack servers that require extended depth racks, the Cisco UCS C3160 has no such requirement and can comfortably fit in a standard-depth rack, such as the Cisco UCS R42610.
The Cisco UCS C3160 uses a modular server architecture which, taking advantage of our blade technology expertise, allows you to upgrade the compute or network nodes in the system without requiring a data migration from one system to another. It delivers:
The Cisco UCS C3160 is deployed as a standalone server in both bare-metal or virtualized environments. Its modular architecture reduces TCO by allowing you to upgrade individual components over time and as use cases evolve, without having to replace the entire system.
For complete list of hardware and software interdependencies and 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
The Cisco UCS C-Series servers supports a wide variety of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options using Cisco 10GBASE SFP+ modules.
Table 2 and Table 3 details the controllers and the supported transceivers.
The C-Series software release 2.0(2) includes the following software files:
Note Always upgrade the BIOS, the Cisco IMC and CMC from the HUU ISO. Do not upgrade individual components (only BIOS or only Cisco IMC or CMC), since this could lead to unexpected behavior. If you choose to upgrade BIOS, the Cisco IMC and the CMC individually and not from the HUU ISO, make sure to upgrade both Cisco IMC, BIOS and CMC to the same container release. If the BIOS, CMC and the Cisco IMC versions are from different container releases, it could result in unexpected behavior. Cisco recommends that you use the Update All option from the Host Upgrade Utility to update the firmware versions of Cisco IMC, BIOS, CMC and all other server components (VIC, RAID Controllers, PCI devices, and LOM) together.
The Cisco Host Upgrade Utility (HUU) is a tool that upgrades the following firmware:
The image file for the firmware is embedded in the ISO. The utility displays a menu that allows you to choose which firmware components to upgrade. For more information on this utility see:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10493/products_user_guide_list.html
The ISO image is now named as ucs-<server_platform>-huu-<version_number>.iso.
The Cisco Host Upgrade Utility contains the following files:
Following table lists the supported HDD models and the firmware versions that can be updated using Host Upgrade Utility (HUU).
Table 6 Supported HDD models and firmware versions
The management client must meet or exceed the following minimum system requirements:
Use the Host Upgrade Utility to upgrade the C-Series firmware. Host Upgrade Utility can upgrade the following software components:
All firmware should be upgraded together to ensure proper operation of your server.
Note Cisco recommends that you use the Update All option from the Host Upgrade Utility to update the firmware versions of Cisco IMC, BIOS, CMC and all other server components (VIC, RAID Controllers, and LOM) together.
The Cisco C3X60 RAID controller supports JBOD mode on the drives where the physical drives are in pass-thru mode and the physical drive is directly exposed to the OS. We recommended you use JBOD mode instead of individual RAID0 volumes when possible.
The Cisco C3X60 allows you to create of large RAID5/RAID6 volume by including all the drives in the system with a spanned array configuration (RAID50/RAID60). Where possible, we recommended you to create multiple, smaller RAID 5/6 volumes with fewer drives per RAID array. This provides redundancy and reduces the operations time for initialization, RAID rebuilds and other operations.
The I/O policy applies to reads on a specific virtual drive. It does not affect the read ahead cache. RAID volume can be configured in two types of I/O policies. These are:
Although Cached I/O provides faster processing, it is only useful when the RAID volume has a small number of slower drives. With the C3X60 4TB SAS drives, Cached I/O has not shown any significant advantage over Direct I/O. Instead, Direct I/O has shown better results over Cached I/O in a majority of I/O patterns. We recommended you to use Direct I/O (Default Policy) in all cases and to use Cached I/O cautiously.
Cisco C3X60 RAID Controller conduct different background operations like Consistency Check (CC), Background Initialization (BGI), Rebuild (RBLD), Volume Expansion & Reconstruction (RLM) and Patrol Real (PR).
While these BGOPS are expected to limit their impact to I/O operations, there have been cases of higher impact during some of the operations like Format or similar I/O operations. In these cases, both the I/O operation and the BGOPS may take more time to complete. In such cases, we recommend you to limit where possible concurrent BGOPS and other intensive I/O operations.
BGOPS on large volumes can take an extended period of time to complete, presenting a situation where operations complete and begin with limited time between operations. Since BGOPS are intended to have a very low impact in most I/O operations, the system should function without any issues. If there are any issues that arise while running concurrent BGOPS and I/O operations, we recommend you to stop either activity to let the other complete before reusing and/or schedule the BGOPS at a later time when the I/O operations are low.
Cisco provides the Cisco Host Upgrade Utility to assist you in upgrading the BIOS, Cisco IMC, CMC LOM, LSI storage controller, and Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards firmware to compatible levels.
Note When upgrading the Cisco IMC firmware for the UCS C-series M3 and M4 platforms, ensure that you update using the full image (for example upd-pkg-cXXX-m3-Cisco IMC.full.*.bin).
The correct and compatible firmware levels for your server model are embedded in the utility ISO.
To use this utility, use the Cisco Host Upgrade Utility User Guide which includes the instructions for downloading and using the utility ISO. Select the guide from this URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10493/products_user_guide_list.html
Once you start the installer application, find the partition where you want to install VMWare. In the following example the partition is vmhba33:C0:T0:L0.
Step 1 Press Alt+F1 to enter the VMWare recovery console.
Step 2 Create a GUID Partition Table (GPT) on the disk:
/dev/disks # partedUtil mklabel mpx.vmhba33:C0:T0:L0 gpt
This section includes the following topics:
The following software features are supported in Release 2.0(2):
The following standard utilities are available in Release 2.0(2):
The supported MIB definition for Release 2.0(2) and later releases can be found at the following link: ftp://ftp.cisco.com/pub/mibs/supportlists/ucs/ucs-C-supportlist.html
Note The above link is incompatible with IE 9.0.
This section lists the resolved caveats for the following releases:
Symptom During Host reboot, CPU voltage sensors, PVTT_P1 and PVTT_P2, are returning inaccurate events in SEL due to incorrect thresholds.
Symptom You cannot create more than 16 virtual drives out of a single drive group using the CLI, WebUI, or XML API interfaces. The first virtual drive creation creates a default drive group consisting of a set of physical drives and of a specific RAID level. Using the CLI, WebUI, or XML API interfaces only 15 more virtual drives can be created before the carve operation fails. The unused space cannot be used to create more virtual drives even though it is available on the drive group.
Workaround If there is unused space available in the drive group, use the StorCLI to create additional virtual drives.(CSCuq93622)
Symptom The server does not respond when the firmware is updated using StorCLI / MSM on Windows using the online firmware update option.
Workaround Do not use online firmware update option. (CSCuq21303)
Symptom The Bash shell is affected by vulnerabilities identified by the following Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE) IDs:
The vulnerabilities identified above are addressed.(CSCur03816)
Symptom The Cisco IMC is affected by an SSLv3 vulnerability identified by the Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE) CVE2014-3566.
The vulnerabilities identified above are addressed.(CSCur33929)
Symptom There are known vulnerabilities in the older versions of the OpenSSL code.
This issue is resolved with the latest CiscoSSL/OpenSSL versions.(CSCup22566)
This section lists the open caveats for the following:
Symptom While trying to switch on the power using the front panel power button, it does not switch on immediately after the AC power on. You have to hold the front panel power button down for a bit longer for it to power on.
Workaround Hold the power button down for 5 seconds and release.(CSCuq78918)
Symptom Unable to access Cisco IMC and unable to obtain the Cisco IMC IP address in the Cisco card mode or with the vlan enabled, when you activate the CMC firmware.
Workaround Perform an AC power cycle of the server.(CSCuq56419)
Symptom Changing the physical drives that are in hot spares or online states to unconfigured good fails with an error message.
Workaround Select physical drives that are in JBOD state, if you want to change to unconfigured good.(CSCuo96421)
Symptom During installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, SAN LUNs mapped will not be visible. Server experiences kernel panic, when Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 OS is installed on local storage and a SAN LUN is mapped.
Workaround No workaround. A driver update disk may be available later to address this issue. (CSCuq75761)
Symptom The WebUI stops responding when BIOS/CMC is updated using Internet Explorer 10.0 browser client.
Workaround Launch the WebUI using any other version of Internet Explorer other than 10.0 or use any other browser client.(CSCuq56061)
Symptom Unable to access Cisco IMC and unable to obtain the Cisco IMC IP address in the Cisco card mode, when you swap the VIC cards.
Symptom LEDs at the back of the C3160 server, next to the SSD drive slots, do not work. The SSD drives are connected to the SATA controller and configured in AHCI Mode. When the SSDs are accessed, there is the does not LED blink to indicate the IO activity on the SSD and also the Fault and Locate LED do not work.
Workaround Use the Intel RSTe driver for the supported Operating systems to operate the activity LEDs and use the Intel tools to use the Locate LED. (CSCuq72696)
Symptom F12 PXE boot does not work when the UEFI shell is set as the first boot option in the legacy or UEFI modes or any EFI is set as the first boot option in the UEFI mode.
Workaround Use F12 only in legacy mode. Ensure that EFI boot option is the first boot device. (CSCuq52084)
Symptom In the legacy boot mode, a few boot options do not appear in the menu or boot override page. This is an intermittent issue and happens when there are multiple boot options with SATA/RAID connected and UEFI boot options are disabled in the boot options.
Workaround If you want to boot from a particular option which does not appear on the menu or the override options, run the policy from Cisco IMC.
Press F2 and set the device as the first boot device. All the devices will be listed correctly on the boot options page. (CSCuq15528)
Symptom You may see intermittent I/O timeout when the virtual drives are configured in Cached-IO mode. This is limited to virtual RAID volumes created in Cached-IO mode to take full advantage of the RAID Cache and to reduce the drive speed overhead and keep using slow drives. When the virtual drives are created in the Cached-IO mode set, and since the virtual drives are inconsistent, background initialization happens to make the virtual drives consistent. At this time, if the host I/Os are issued to load the drives and RAID cache in full load, the I/Os are blocked for short intervals which exceed the host OS expectations of the I/O time and they timeout.
Step 1 Perform a full init of the VD when created.
Step 2 Set the host or application I/O timeout to a higher value. (CSCup19648)
Symptom The following error message appears when you execute the StorCLI commands to create volumes with number of drives greater than 32: invalid parameter
Workaround Use 32 or lesser number of drives while using StorCLI. (CSCuo84405)
Symptom In Legacy Option ROM with the Ctrl-R BIOS menu, the drive list in the PD Mgmt is not sorted according to the drive slot numbers.
Workaround Select the drive for which you want to see the drive slot number. Slot number is displayed on the right hand side of the window. (CSCun21928)
Symptom If the host I/Os are at high loads with continuous write access to the drives, the completion time for the background operations exceeds a month.
Workaround Increase the background operation rate to 100%. This reduces the operation time. (CSCun63438)
For configuration information for this release, please refer to the following:
The following related documentation is available for the Cisco Unified Computing System:
For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html.
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