Release Notes for Cisco UCS C-Series Software, Release 2.0(7)
Overview of Cisco UCS C3260 Rack Servers
Differences Between Cisco UCS C3160 and C3260 Systems
Hardware and Software Interoperability
Best Practices to Configure Cisco UCS 3X60 RAID Controllers
Upgrading BIOS and BMC Firmware
Supported Features in Release 2.0(7d)
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
First Published Date: September 17, 2015
Last Revision Date: January 8, 2016
This document describes the new features, system requirements, open caveats and known behaviors for C- series software release 2.0(7) 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.
The Cisco UCS C3260 is a modular, dense storage rack server with dual server nodes, optimized for large datasets used in environments such as big data, cloud, object storage, and content delivery.
The UCS C3260 chassis is a modular architecture consisting of the following modules:
Table 1-2 lists the differences between Cisco UCS C3160 and Cisco UCS 3260 systems.
2.This SIOC is not backward-compatible with the Cisco UCS C3160 system. For details on migration from C3160 to C3260 servers see, Cisco UCS C3260 Server Installation and Service Guide |
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 3 and Table 4 details the controllers and the supported transceivers.
The C-Series software release 2.0(7) includes the following software files:
Note Always upgrade the BIOS, the BMC and CMC from the HUU ISO. Do not upgrade individual components (only BIOS or only BMC or CMC), since this could lead to unexpected behavior. If you choose to upgrade BIOS, the BMC and the CMC individually and not from the HUU ISO, make sure to upgrade both BMC, BIOS and CMC to the same container release. If the BIOS, CMC and the BMC 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 BMC, 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:
– RAID controller for UCS C3X60 Storage Servers
– UCS C3X60 12G SAS Pass through Controller
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 specific version of the:
C isco Host Upgrade Utility User Guide
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).
The management client must meet or exceed the following minimum system requirements:
Note You may face some issues with Chrome 41 or 43. We recommend you avoid using these versions.
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 BMC, BIOS, CMC and all other server components (VIC, RAID Controllers, and LOM) together.
For information on upgrade, refer, C isco Host Upgrade Utility User Guide.
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, BMC, CMC LOM, LSI storage controller, and Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards firmware to compatible levels.
Note When upgrading the CMC and BMC firmware for the servers, ensure that you update using the full image (for example upd-pkg-c3260-cimc.full.2.0.7d.bin or C3260-CMC.2.0.7d.img).
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
This section includes the following topics:
The following software features were added in Release 2.0(7d):
– SAS Expanders that allow you to maximize the storage capability of an SAS controller card
– Zoning - support for assigning individual Hard Disk Drives (HDD) to either server in the dedicated or shared modes.
The following standard utilities are available in Release 2.0(7):
The supported MIB definition for Release 2.0(7) 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.
The following section lists the open caveats:
The following section lists the known behaviors:
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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