Cisco UCS VIC
Drivers
Overview of Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card Drivers
Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) drivers facilitate communication between supported operating systems and Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards. Cisco UCS VIC driver ISO bundles include an eNIC driver and an fNIC driver. The eNIC is the driver for the Cisco UCS VIC Ethernet NIC. The fNIC is the driver for the Cisco UCS VIC Fibre Channel over Ethernet HBA. fNIC is not supported in UCS Manager Release 2.5.
For Windows, the ISO bundle also includes the iSCSI Crash Dump driver, which supports Windows crash dumps when the server is booted from the Cisco VIC Ethernet interface using the Microsoft iSCSI initiator.
Cisco UCS Manager Release 3.1(2) and later releases do not support Cisco UCS M-Series Servers.
Cisco UCS Manager Release 2.5 that introduced Cisco UCS M-Series Modular servers, continues to provide vNIC capabilities. Additionally, it provides for a new capability with its virtualized shared local storage. This virtual storage controller provides access to a virtual drive that is provided to the server through the shared storage controller and hard drives in the chassis. The virtual storage controller introduces a new PCIe device known as a SCSI NIC (sNIC), which is presented to the OS. The OS views these items as locally-attached SCSI devices.
The sNIC provides the pathway for SCSI commands from the server to the virtual drive. This controller is a new device to the OS and uses an sNIC driver that is loaded into the OS. Because the sNIC is a new PCIe device, the sNIC driver may not be part of some OS distributions. When that is the case, the sNIC driver must be loaded at the time of OS installation to see the storage device on the server. The sNIC driver, like the eNIC and fNIC drivers, is certified by the OS vendor and eventually included as part of the core OS install package. When the driver is present, the virtual drive is visible to the OS, and is presented as a standard hard drive connected through a RAID controller.
Supported Hardware and Software
For a complete list of supported hardware and software, see the Hardware and Software Interoperability Matrix for this release.
Obtaining the ISO Image Bundle
You can download the UCS Drivers ISO bundle, which contains most of the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card drivers. In some cases, a driver might be in a different bundle, which is noted in the installation procedure for that driver.
Cisco UCS Manager Release 3.1(2) and later releases do not support Cisco UCS M-Series Servers.
| Step 1 | In a web browser, navigate to Cisco.com. |
| Step 2 | Under Support> Downloads, click All Downloads. |
| Step 3 | In the product selector, click Products, then click Servers - Unified Computing. |
| Step 4 | If prompted,
enter your
Cisco.com username and
password to log in.
You must be signed in to download Unified Computing System (UCS) drivers. |
| Step 5 | Choose your
server.
Cisco UCS drivers are available for Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Server Software, Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount UCS-Managed Server Software, and Cisco UCS M-Series Modular Server Software. |
| Step 6 | Click Unified Computing System (UCS) Drivers. |
| Step 7 | Click the Release Notes link to view the latest version of the Release Notes. |
| Step 8 | For each driver
ISO that you want to download, do the following:
|
What to Do Next
Read the Release Notes before installing the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card drivers.
Installation Methods
Installing and updating the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card drivers requires administrative privileges.
VIC Drivers for ESXi
You can install the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card drivers for ESXi in the following ways:
VIC Drivers for Linux
You can install the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card drivers for Linux in the following ways:
VIC Drivers for Linux on M-Series
Cisco UCS Manager Release 3.1(2) and later releases do not support Cisco UCS M-Series Servers.
VIC Drivers for Windows
You can install the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card drivers for Windows in the following ways:
 Note | To avoid a system crash, ensure that you adhere to the following best practice for installing the VIC drivers during the OS installation. |
- Upgrade the infrastructure firmware, which includes the UCS Manager, the fabric interconnects, and the chassis I/O modules.
- Upgrade the server and adapter firmware.
- Upgrade the OS VIC drivers.
 Caution | Failure to adhere to the proper upgrade sequence can cause the server to crash. |
Cisco UCS Manager User Documentation
Cisco UCS Manager offers you a new set of smaller, use-case based documentation described in the following table:
|
Guide |
Description |
|---|---|
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Discusses Cisco UCS architecture and Day 0 operations, including Cisco UCS Manager initial configuration and configuration best practices. |
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Discusses password management, role-based access configuration, remote authentication, communication services, CIMC session management, organizations, backup and restore, scheduling options, BIOS tokens, and deferred deployments. |
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Discusses physical and virtual infrastructure components used and managed by Cisco UCS Manager. |
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Discusses downloading and managing firmware, upgrading through Auto Install, upgrading through service profiles, directly upgrading at endpoints using firmware auto sync, managing the capability catalog, deployment scenarios, and troubleshooting. |
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Discusses the new licenses, registering Cisco UCS domain with Cisco UCS Central, power capping, server boot, server profiles, and server-related policies. |
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Discusses all aspects of storage management, such as SAN and VSAN in Cisco UCS Manager. |
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Discusses all aspects of network management, such as LAN and VLAN connectivity in Cisco UCS Manager. |
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Discusses all aspects of system and health monitoring, including system statistics in Cisco UCS Manager. |
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