First Published: November 12, 2019

Last Updated: July 2, 2020

Release Notes for BMA Connector Pack

Cisco UCS Director

Cisco UCS Director delivers unified, highly secure management for supported compute, network, storage, and virtualization platforms and for the industry's leading converged infrastructure solutions, which are based on the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) and Cisco Nexus platforms. Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and network layers through Cisco UCS to provide data center administrators with comprehensive visibility and management capabilities for compute, network, storage, and virtualization. For more information, see Cisco UCS Director on Cisco.com.

Revision History

Release

Date

Description

6.7.3.1

November 12, 2019

Created for Release 6.7.3.1.

6.7.4.2

July 02, 2020

Support for Bare Metal Agent on ESXi 7.0 and CentOS 8.0.

Connector Pack

Connector packs help you perform connector level upgrade in Cisco UCS Director without impacting other connectors. After claiming Cisco UCS Director in Cisco Intersight, as a system administrator, you can view information on new versions of connector packs that are available for upgrade. The top header pane of the user interface displays a Download icon indicating that new connector pack versions are available. You can select and upgrade the connector packs in Cisco UCS Director.

BMA Connector Pack

Cisco UCS Director Bare Metal Agent (BMA) automates the process of using a Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) to install operating systems on bare metal servers or virtual machines. Bare Metal Agent provides the following services that are required for a functional PXE install environment:

  • Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP)

  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

  • Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)

When this environment is operational and Bare Metal Agent and Cisco UCS Director are correctly configured, you can build PXE installation tasks into any Cisco UCS Director infrastructure workflow.

You can access Bare Metal Agent through Secure Shell (SSH). You can also perform services on Bare Metal Agent, such as DHCP configuration and starting and stopping services, through Cisco UCS Director. A single Cisco UCS Director node can support multiple Bare Metal Agent applications. BMA connector pack provides support for new versions of BMA.

Upgrading Connector Packs

Before you begin

  • You must have system administrator privileges in Cisco UCS Director.

  • Cisco UCS Director has been claimed in Cisco Intersight. For information on claiming a device, see the integrated guided walkthrough titled Learn How to Claim a Device available within the Online Help menu in the Cisco Intersight user interface.

  • Cisco UCS Director is successfully connected to Cisco Intersight.

  • Take a snapshot of Cisco UCS Director before you initiate the upgrade.

Procedure

Step 1

On the header, click New Upgrades Available.

The Available System Upgrades screen appears and will display all available connector packs for upgrade along with version information. Upon login, if you clicked Yes to the pop-up message, then the very same upgrade screen appears.

Note 

The New Upgrades Available icon is visible on the header only when new versions of the current running connector packs are available for upgrade.

Step 2

Check the check box of a connector pack from the list.

You can check the check boxes of multiple connector packs.
Step 3

Click Upgrade.

Step 4

In the Confirm Upgrade dialog box, click Yes.

After you confirm that the connector version must be upgraded, the validation process is initiated. If the validation process completes successfully, the upgrade process is initiated and the System Upgrade Status screen displays the upgrade status. After the upgrade process is successful, the Logout option is enabled.

Step 5

Click Logout.

While upgrading a base platform pack that includes changes to all infrastructure components, all Cisco UCS Director services are restarted. As a result, after clicking Logout, the screen could appear to be unresponsive for a few minutes. After all the services are restarted, and the upgrade process is complete, you can login to Cisco UCS Director .

What to do next

You can view the upgrade reports by choosing Administration > System > System Updates. From this screen, you can double-click on a report, and view additional details on the upgrade process. For more information, see Viewing Connector Pack Upgrade Information.

Viewing Connector Pack Upgrade Information

Procedure

Step 1

Choose Administration > System.

Step 2

On the System page, click System Updates.

Information such as upgrade request ID, user that initiated the upgrade, upgrade start time and end time, and the upgrade status are displayed.
Step 3

Select a connector pack and choose View Details to view details such as connector pack name, upgraded version, and prior version.

Step 4

Click State History to view the various states of the connector pack upgrade process. For example, upgrade request received, upgrade process initiated or upgrade process completed.

Step 5

Click Stages to view the entire lifecycle of the connector pack upgrade request.

New and Changed Features in Release 6.7.3.1

This section provides an overview of the significant new and changed features in this release.

Support for Windows Server 2019 x64 Operationg System

This connector pack release introduces support for PXE boot and installation operations for Windows 2019 x64 OS (Windows 2019 OS) images. You can use this OS image in bare metal provisioning workflows.

For more information, see Cisco UCS Director Bare Metal Agent Installation and Configuration Guide, Release 6.7.

Support for Bare Metal Agent on RHEL 7.X and CentOS 7.x

This connector pack release introduces support for Bare Metal Agent (BMA) on RHEL 7.x and CentOS 7.x for Cisco UCS C240 M5 rack servers (with Platform Controller Hub specifying M.2 drive).

M.2 driver support requires additional configuration changes in the kickstart file (ks-uefi.cfg). This will not be applied in the existing OS images and it will be applied only in the new OS images added to the BMA. To have the configuration changes in the existing image ks-uefi.cfg, you have to remove the existing OS images and add it again to get the configuration changes.You can remove the OS image directories (for example, CENTOS7.6) by performing the following tasks:

  • Navigate to /opt/cnsaroot/images/ and execute rm -rf CentOS7.6 command to remove the image directory.

  • Navigate to /opt/cnsaroot/templates and execute rm -rf CentOS7.6 command to remove the image directory.

  • Navigate to /var/www/html/CentOS7.6 and execute unlink CentOS7.6 command to remove the soft link of the image directory.

After removing the directories, you should provision the OS image again for the latest kickstart changes.

New and Changed Features in Release 6.7.4.2

This section provides an overview of the significant new and changed features in this release.

Support for Bare Metal Agent on CentOS 8.0 and ESXi 7.0

This connector pack release introduces support for Bare Metal Agent on CentOS 8.0 and ESXi 7.0.

For more information, see Cisco UCS Director Compatibility Matrix, Release 6.7.

Open and Resolved Bugs

The open and resolved bugs for this release are accessible through the Cisco Bug Search Tool. This web-based tool provides you with access to the Cisco bug tracking system, which maintains information about bugs and vulnerabilities in this product and other Cisco hardware and software products.


Note

You must have a Cisco.com account to log in and access the Cisco Bug Search Tool. If you do not have one, you can register for an account.

For more information about the Cisco Bug Search Tool, see the Bug Search Tool Help & FAQ.

Open Bugs in Release 6.7.3.1

There are no open bugs in this release.

Open Bugs in Release 6.7.4.2

There are no open bugs in this release.

Resolved Bugs in Release 6.7.3.1

There are no resolved bugs in this release.

Resolved Bugs in Release 6.7.4.2

There are no resolved bugs in this release.