B200 M3 Server – AgileOps

advanced boot or secure boot configuration cannot be applied to the specified server There are not enough resources overall

Ibrahim Quraishi — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 09:59:21 +0000

Failure Reason: advanced boot or secure boot configuration cannot be applied to the specified server There are not enough resources overall, You might have come across this error. Although the above error looks like a very generic error when you apply a service profile to a Server. Most of the on-line search takes you in the direction of making sure you are using the legacy CD ROM drive. With the process of elimination I found that while using the Flex Flash ‘SD Card’ in Boot Option this error was trigged. once I removed the SD Card, I was able to apply the profile with out any problems. But I wanted to use the Flex Flash with RAID-1,( SD Cards) to boot. more info on Cisco UCS FlexFlash Configuration of Secure Digital (SD) Card As you might be aware that boot from SD card is a new feature introduced in version 2.2 , we then started looking at he version of UCS Manager and Firmware running on the environment. I had recently upgraded this UCS to the 2.2(1d) so that was not an issue. We thought to double check the firmware configuration, when going through this options we create a Host Firmware Policy specifically only for M3 and just selecting the M 200 M3 CIMC and Bios with the latest version of firmware. more info on firmware can be found CISCO UCS Firmware Update Process Once this option was applied to the Service profile The blade started to boot up. The only thing different to this was I had created a custom firmware on Host Firmware Policy called 2.2 firmware but ended up selected quite a lot of servers with latest version of software .. However in my UCS Environment I have only got M 200 M3. So to fix this issue, make sure in ‘Host Firmware Package’ make sure you have customized firmware profile for every different server you have, so that you can individually apply it to the service profile you are assign to that specific server. Example M2 and M3 Blades we can have two Host Firmware Packages which you can add to specific Service profiles individually. Additional resources: If you want to learn more about the process of doing a Firmware update please checkout my link CISCO UCS Firmware Update Process If you want to learn more about the process of doing a Firmware update please checkout my link Cisco UCS FlexFlash Configuration of Secure Digital (SD) Card ]]>

CISCO UCS Firmware Update Process

Ibrahim Quraishi — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 15:56:25 +0000

This is released on 24-JUL-2014, you can find more details on the release notes for this firmware version: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/release/notes/ucs_3_0_rn.html#pgfId-225587 Just to give everyone an idea there are two from of Firmware that needs to be updated on UCS system 1. Infrastructure Firmware In Infrastructure Software firmware we update the firmware of the following

Cisco UCS Manager software
Kernel and system firmware for the fabric interconnects
I/O module firmware

2. Server Firmware Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Server Software Bundle

CIMC firmware
BIOS firmware
Adapter firmware
Board controller firmware
Third-party firmware images required by the new server

This also includes the firmware of Adapter, BIOS, FC Adapters, HBA Option ROM, Storage, Controller, Local Disk Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount UCS-Managed Server Software BundleCIMC firmware

BIOS firmware
Adapter firmware
Board controller firmware
Third-party firmware images required by the new server

So, without wasting any time these are the steps to follow: Step One

Create an all Configuration Backup
Verifying HA status of Fabric Interconnects ( as we do not have any compute it should not affect us in anyway)
Verifying the status of I/O Modules
Verifying the Status of the Servers and Adaptors
Download Firmware Images to the Fabric Interconnect.

Step Two

Disable the Call Home ( Email alerts for reboot)
Updating the Firmware on the Adapters, CIMCs and IOMs

If the Service profiles are configured using host/management firmware policy this will create an error and we might need to think of Plan B (If we do not get any error message we can progress with upgrade)

Activating the Firmware on the Adapters
Activating the Firmware on the CIMCs
Activating the Board Controller Firmware
Activating the I/O Modules
Activating the Subordinate Fabric Interconnect Firmware
Making the primary FI the Subordinate by login to FI ssh to the primary and to make it subordinate first check

# connect local-mgmt FI-01-A(local-mgmt)# show cluster extended-state Cluster Id: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Start time: Mon Jun 23 14:41:56 2014 Last election time: Tue Oct 7 11:54:01 2014 A: UP, SUBORDINATE B: UP, PRIMARY A: memb state UP, lead state SUBORDINATE, mgmt services state: UP B: memb state UP, lead state PRIMARY, mgmt services state: UP heartbeat state PRIMARY_OK INTERNAL NETWORK INTERFACES: eth1, UP eth2, UP HA READY Detailed state of the device selected for HA storage: Chassis 1, serial: xxxxx, state: active Chassis 2, serial: xxxxx, state: active Chassis 3, serial: xxxxx, state: active In my case as shown above FI B is the Primary so I can connect t0 FI B with hte below command . FI-01-A(local-mgmt)# connect local-mgmt B # cluster lead A

Activating the Primary Fabric Interconnect Firmware

Step Three

Listing the BIOS Upgrade Versions
Create a Host Firmware Package
Applying the Host Firmware Package
Enabling Call Home.

Additional Notes Prerequisite for Firmware update https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/upgrading/from2-0/to2-0MR/b_UpgradingCiscoUCSFrom2-0To2-0MR/b_UpgradingCiscoUCSFrom1-4To2-0_chapter_010.html#concept_DD68485034FB4E258D5827880D37225C

Process of Upgrading and Activating the Firmware https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/upgrading/from2-0/to2-0MR/b_UpgradingCiscoUCSFrom2-0To2-0MR/b_UpgradingCiscoUCSFrom1-4To2-0_chapter_0100.html#task_F1119EB4EDBA42578ADE662462B5C4CE UCS Firmware deep dive https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/firmware-mgmt/gui/2-1/b_GUI_Firmware_Management_21/b_GUI_Firmware_Management_21_chapter_0100.html#concept_2474DE9D2048450CA1A37A8A3D3EE597

You can also find the process of upgrading on this youtube video httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6LQt2DYVWA its broken down into 3 steps.

]]>

Cisco UCS FlexFlash Configuration of Secure Digital (SD) Card

Ibrahim Quraishi — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 19:32:54 +0000

Cisco UCS FlexFlash /SDCard Configuration for Booting Server Operating System. As most of the Cisco UCS users might be aware that Cisco has now add a lot of improvements and new features on the latest upgrade 2.2(1e). One of the feature which we have started using is Cisco FlexFlash which is an SD Card. Its fully support if you buy the SD Card from Cisco and we can even do mirroring on the Flash cards for redundancy, we will be installing ESXi Server 5.5 on these blades after mirroring them. So where and How to install the Secure Digital (SD) Card ? If the CISCO UCS B200 Blade is in the Chassis you will need to power it off and slide it out just half way through and you should find the SD Card slot on the left for more information on how about this can be found on the following link https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/hw/blade-servers/B200M3.html As you might be aware that CISCO UCS blade is just as equal to a brick and all the configuration is done on the logical server called Service profile. you will need to create a new / clone an existing Service profile template and modify with the below changes which I have shown below on this post. You will have to create a boot policy with CD Drive (legacy ) and SD Card and Some time you may end up getting this error ‘ advanced boot or secure boot configuration cannot be applied to the specified server There are not enough resources overall ‘ if you see it follow my blog post. I have to make you aware that if you want to use SD card with Mirroring or RAID 1 you have to create the following new policies and create a Boot policy as mentioned above. 1. Disk policy with Mirror and any configuration 2. We have to create two Scrub policy under policy ( you can call it any thing you want which makes you understand what configuration you have selected)

Flex Flash Scrub
No Scrub

So where will you find the Flex Flash Controller? Click on the Left pan on Equipment and Select the Chassis then the Server, on the right you will find the below details click on Inventory and select the last tab which is Storage on the Storage tab you will find FlexFlash Controller Note: this FlexFlash is only support if you are running 2.2 (d1) firmware. Once you assign the new service profile policy, we will see the below error on the FlexFlaash Cards

Go to the service Profile and select the Policies and change the Scrub policy
in this create 2 policy the default is no scrub but you can create one called FlexFlash Scrub and the other one No Scrub

To create the scrub policy click on Service profile of the server and click Policy > Scrub and click Create Scrub Policy

You will have to use the first policy for Flex flash Scrub which should have the below settings.

FlexFlash Scrub: should set to Yes

You then need to create a new policy for No-Scrub as shown below :

After creating two policy this is the tricky bit to have the SD card as Mirror you will need to do two reboots first set the scrub policy to FlexFlash-Scrub ( note this will scrub the SD cards) and click Save Do the following steps:

Go to the server and Click server Maintenance this will scrub the flash
Reboot the server in the following manor, go the the Equipment tab select the Chassis and the server Click on ‘Server Maintenance’ and click on ‘Re-acknowledge’ server

Acknowledge for Reboot You will find the rediscovery Once its configured go back to service profile Go to > Polices Select Scrub Policy and change it to No-Scrub from the drop down menue which should look like below: 5. Go to the server and Click server Maintenance this will Mirror and pair the SD card to Raid1/ Mirroring 6. Reboot the server in the following manor, go the the Equipment tab select the Chassis and the server Click on ‘Server Maintenance’ and click on ‘Re-acknowledge’ server Acknowledge for Reboot After the server does the rediscovery and boots successfully, You will see that this is successfully paired with is RAID 1 Mirroring. Please note the Raid Status : Enabled Paired Error message if the Raid is not working, this means you have to go through the process again. always make sure you only change the scrub policy on the specific server profile and not the service profile template as this will create problems on the working profiles. Another example of error is Raid Status Disabled How to test ? The only confirmation we can get is on the below image where it says Raid Status Enabled Paired, however I have tested swapping the SD cards out one by one and the ESXi Server boots successfully you will immediately see the error message that the pair is disabled. Unfortunately you will need to pull the server out to change swap the SD cards but hay at least you will find out if the mirroring is working. Also you will need to remember that after installing ESXi on SD card will give you an error message on the ESXi host that ‘The ESXi host does not have persistent storage’ you will need to add the storage and a scrach partition. To create a scrach partition follow the below VMware KB. https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1033696 o~~r I might create a blog on how to do it later…~~ My friend Vikram has just posted the process on his blog www.viktec.com System logs on host are stored on non-persistent storage Please find the new updates the latest firmware is bringing. Release 2.2(1b) adds support for the following: IPv6 Management Support Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) In-band Management Fabric scaling: VLAN, VIFs, IGMP, Network Adapter Endpoints Uni-Directional Link Detection (UDLD) Support User Space NIC (usNIC) for Low Latency Support for Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) C-Series Servers Direct Connect to FI without FEX Two-factor Authentication for UCS Manager Logins VM-FEX for Hyper-V Management with Microsoft SCVMM Direct KVM Access Server Firmware Auto Sync Enhanced Local Storage Management Flash Adapters and HDD Firmware Management Precision Boot Order Control Secure Boot UEFI Boot Support FlexFlash (Local SD card) Support Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Inventory DIMM Blacklisting and Correctable Error Reporting C-Series Board Controller Firmware Management Additional resources related to this post: If you want to learn more about the process of doing a Firmware update please checkout my link CISCO UCS Firmware Update Process If you want to learn more about the process of doing a Firmware update please checkout my link advanced boot or secure boot configuration cannot be applied to the specified server There are not enough resources overall