Release Notes for UCS C-Series Software, Release 1.4(4)

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Table 1 Online History Change

Part Number	Revision	Date	Description
OL-26649-01	A0	March 14, 2012	Created release notes for Release 1.4(4a)
	B0	March 28, 2012	Revised firmware for UCS P81E
	C0	September 14, 2012	Updated the Open Caveats section.
	D0	July 02, 2015	Added references to the Cisco UCS Manager release notes and the Cisco UCS C Series Server Integration with Cisco UCS Manager documentation.
	E0	August 17, 2015	Updated the System Requirements section with Java compatibility information.

Overview of the Server Models

The Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server is designed for performance and density over a wide range of business workloads, from web serving to distributed databases. The enterprise-class Cisco UCS C220 M3 server extends the capabilities of the Cisco UCS portfolio in a 1RU form factor with the addition of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family. In addition, the Cisco UCS C220 M3 server offers up to two Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600s, 16 DIMM slots, eight disk drives, and two 1 Gigabit Ethernet LAN-on-motherboard (LOM) ports.

The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server is designed for both performance and expandability over a wide range of storage-intensive infrastructure workloads, from big data to collaboration. The enterprise-class Cisco UCS C240 M3 server further extends the capabilities of the Cisco UCS portfolio in a 2RU form factor with the addition of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family. The Cisco UCS C240 M3 offers up to two Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family, 24 DIMM slots, 24 disk drives, and four 1 Gigabit Ethernet LOM ports.

The Cisco UCS C220 M3 and the Cisco UCS C240 M3 interfaces with Cisco UCS using the Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card (VIC). The Cisco UCS P81E VIC is a virtualization-optimized Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 x8 10-Gbps adapter designed for use with Cisco UCS C-Series servers. The VIC is a dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe adapter that can support up to 18 PCIe standards-compliant virtual interfaces, which can be dynamically configured so that both their interface types—network interface card (NIC) or host bus adapter (HBA) and identity (MAC address and worldwide name (WWN))—are established using just-in-time provisioning. In addition, the Cisco UCS P81E can support network interface virtualization and Cisco® Data Center Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) technology.

Overview of the Pre-Installed Cisco Flexible Flash Card

The Cisco Flexible Flash card is pre-installed with three software bundles, each on one of four preconfigured virtual drives (VDs). The fourth VD allows you to install an OS or an embedded hypervisor.

The VDs are configured with the following content:

• Cisco UCS Server Configuration Utility (SCU).
• Hypervisor (HV). This is a VD that you can use for your own purposes.
• Cisco Drivers (Drivers).
• Cisco Host Upgrade Utility (HUU).

Refer to the following documents for more information about these tasks:

• Replacing a card: Cisco UCS C260 Server Installation and Service Guide
• Enabling and booting a VD: Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Server Configuration Guide or the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Server CLI Configuration Guide
• Monitoring and managing a card with CIMC: Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Server Configuration Guide or the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Server CLI Configuration Guide

The links to these documents are in the C-Series documentation road map:

http://www.cisco.com/go/unifiedcomputing/c-series-doc

Hardware and Software Interoperability

For 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

Transceivers Specifications

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.

Firmware Files

The C-Series software release 1.4(4a) includes the following software files:

 

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Note Always upgrade both the BIOS and the CIMC from the HUU ISO. Do not upgrade individual components (only BIOS or only CIMC), since this could lead to unexpected behavior.

Host Upgrade Utility

The Cisco Host Upgrade Utility (HUU) is a tool that upgrades the following firmware:

• Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC)
• System BIOS
• LAN on motherboard (LOM)

– Intel Ethernet i350 Server Adapter

• LSI

– LSI SAS2008

– LSI MegaRAID SAS 9266-8i

• Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card (VIC)
• Broadcom PCI adapters

– 5709 Dual and Quad port adapters

– 57712 Dual port adapter

– 57712 10GBaseT

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

Starting with this 1.4 release, separate ISO images of Host Upgrade Utility are available for different server platforms.

The ISO image is now named as ucs-<server_platform>-huu-<version_number>.iso.

The Cisco Host Upgrade Utility contains the following files:

System Requirements

The management client must meet or exceed the following minimum system requirements:

• Sun JRE 1.7.0_45 or earlier (Till 1.6.0_14)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or higher
• Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, Apple Mac OS X v10.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 or higher operating systems

Updating the Firmware

Use the Host Upgrade Utility to upgrade the C-Series firmware. Host Upgrade Utility can upgrade the following software components:

• BIOS
• CIMC
• LAN on Motherboard Settings
• PCIe adapter Firmware

All firmware should be upgraded together to ensure proper operation of your server.

Upgrading BIOS and CIMC Firmware

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Cisco provides the Cisco Host Upgrade Utility to assist you in upgrading the BIOS, CIMC, LOM, LSI storage controller, and Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card firmware to compatible levels.

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 for Release ost 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

Features in this Release

The following features were introduced in the Release 1.4(4a):

Hardware Features

• Support for all memory configurations
• Increased number of disks and availability of 2.5 inch options
• Availability of the following power supplies:

– Support for 650 W Liteon power supplies in C220

– Support for 450 W Liteon and 1200 W Delta power supplies in C240.

• Increased commonality in power supplies and rail kits.
• Design support for rack integration.
• Support for light guided diagnostics on the UCS C240 servers
• Support for Cisco Flex Flash with all diagnostic tools integrated into the server.
• Support for BIOS update via CIMC.
• CIMC support for 1G dedicated LAN connection.

Software Features

• UCS Manager support for UCS C220 M3 & UCS C240 M3.
• CIMC Tech Support information can now be downloaded with Web browser.
• CIMC syslog filtering and improved message severity.
• CIMC SNMP v3 is now the default mode for SNMP for improved security.
• Improved CIMC SEL messages.
• CIMC CLI commands to display CPU, DIMM, HDD, and PCI Product ID (PID).
• CIMC now synchronizes its clock with system real-time clock when CIMC boots.

Software Utilities

The following standard utilities are available:

• Host Update Utility (HUU)
• Server Config Utility (SCU) including Interactive Offline Diagnostics (IOD)
• BIOS and CIMC Firmware Update utilities

The utilities features are as follows:

• Support for Intel Romley EP Server Platform
• Availability of HUU, SCU and drivers on the SD card subsystem as bootable ISO images
• Online updates from cisco.com supported

Supported Platforms

The following platforms are supported in Release 1.4(4a):

• UCS-C220
• UCS-C240

SNMP

The supported MIB definition for release 1.4(4a) can be found at the following link: ftp://ftp.cisco.com/pub/mibs/supportlists/ucs/ucs-C-supportlist.html

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Note The above link is incompatible with IE 9.0.

Supported Storage Controllers

SNMP supports the following storage controllers:

• Cisco UCSC RAID SAS 2008M-8i
• SAS 9266-8i260-8i

CIMC

Symptom When KVM is launched, a "Login Failed" error displays and KVM closes.

Workaround Wait for 2-3 minutes and relaunch KVM.

Symptom The Network mode cannot be set to cisco_card mode even though the option is available.

Workaround Install the Cisco UCS P81E card to move into the cisco_card network mode.

Symptom In Power Restore Policy, a delay value displays when the delay type is set to random.

Workaround Ignore the displayed value.

Symptom When you create a image of file or folder size bigger than 4 GB using vMedia Create image feature, the following message displays:

Workaround Use files or folders with smaller sizes.

Symptom If you try to use vMedia to map both an.img file and a physical USB stick (pen/thumb drive) simultaneously, the following message (or a similar one) displays:

Workaround Map one drive at a time.

Symptom KVM and vMedia do not work with mismatched IE and JRE executables.

Workaround Ensure JRE matches the IE version.

Symptom The mouse does not work or track in the LSI Web BIOS tool.

Workaround Use one of the following workarounds:

• Set the mouse to relative motion, no acceleration. When running the WebBIOS as a legacy OptionROM, absolute mouse positioning is not supported, and no acceleration gives the best behavior of the two relative positioning modes.
• Move the cursor to single cursor mode by using KVM windows > Tools > single cursor. The single cursor mode eliminates the discrepancy between the local cursor movement and the remote cursor movement.

Symptom BIOS update fails if KVM is launched while BIOS is uploading.

Workaround Use one of the following workarounds:

• Launch the KVM in another browser or session.
• Do not launch the KVM if the BIOS upload is in the Uploading stage.

Symptom When you launch KVM in IE, the following message displays:

Workaround Perform the following steps:

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Step 1 In the IE, select Tools > Internet Options.

The Internet Options dialog will pop up.

Step 2 Click the Advanced tab.

Step 3 Uncheck the Do not save encrypted pages to disk option.

Step 4 Click OK.

 

Symptom If you disable both SSH and HTTP, connectivity to CIMC is lost.

Workaround If disabled, reset CIMC to factory default using the F8 utility during POST.

Symptom CIMC Web GUI does not display after the certificate import process and the browser displays the following message:

Workaround During the certificate import process, provide different values for the Subject Information and Issuer Information fields.

Symptom In IE, when network mode is changed to cisco_card mode, a “Unable to parse xml” message displays.

Workaround Use one of the following workarounds:

• Update IE browser version to version 8.0.6001.18702 and above.
• Use other browser clients like Firefox, Chrome etc.

BIOS

Symptom The Power Saving and Performance modes displays the same 1.5V with 3DPC.

Workaround None. This is an expected behavior.

Symptom While upgrading from the beta version to the FCS version, the system gets stuck at different points in the POST screen, usually at the initial video screens, before the options can be executed.

Workaround Shutdown the host and perform a CMOS clear.

 

CIMC

Symptom The LED sensor color is red or amber or blue (or any supported color) even though the LED state is set to OFF.

Workaround Ignore the LED color when the LED state is set to OFF.(CSCth84883)

Symptom SNMPv1 traps are sent when SNMPv2 and SNMPv3 traps are enabled.

Workaround None.(CSCtr37876)

Symptom.The Boot Loader version displays extra characters after the CIMC version.

Workaround This is a new feature and displays the U-Boot version.(CSCti49855)

Symptom The AES encryption field does not show the encryption level (128, 256, and so on) on the Web GUI and CLI.

Workaround The SNMP V3 encryption key length must be clearly indicated. The SNMP agent supports AES - 128 bit encryption by default. (CSCtr31577)

Symptom The SNMPv3 traps are not received in the Net-SNMP receiver.

Workaround None. (CSCtr83298)

Symptom The power supply serial number is unavailable in the SNMP inventory because the Power Management Bus (PMBus) has not provided the power information.

Workaround None.(CSCtw72543)

Symptom The SNMPv3 walk, with AES encryption enabled, produces a “Decryption Error” when an SNMPv3 trap is triggered by an event. An “authentication failure” error is also encountered on triggering an event with the secure hash algorithm (SHA) authentication. The SHA trap error is encountered with both “authpriv” and “authnopriv” settings. The issue is observed till the master agent is restarted by clicking Save All in the CIMC Web UI SNMP configuration page.

Workaround Use the Message-Digest algorithm 5 (MD5) authentication and DES encryption for v3 user configuration. (CSCtx11173)

Symptom During high or medium Serial Over LAN (SOL) traffic, the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) LAN interfaces becomes unresponsive.

Workaround Do not use IPMI queries during high SOL traffic.(CSCtd05874)

Symptom The KVM screen displays a blank screen.

Workaround Use the physical monitor to change the screen resolution. The following resolutions are supported:

• 640x480 (8bpp)
• 800x600 (8bpp)
• 1024x768 (8bpp)
• 1280x1024 (8bpp)
• 1600x1200(8bpp)
• 1920x1080(8bpp)
• 1920x1200(8bpp)
• 640x480 (16bpp)
• 800x600 (16bpp)
• 1024x768 (16bpp)
• 1280x1024(16bpp)
• 1600x1200(16bpp)
• 1920x1080(16bpp)
• 1920x1200(16bpp)
• 640x480 (24bpp)
• 800x600 (24bpp)
• 1024x768 (24bpp)
• 1280x1024(24bpp)
• 640x480 (32bpp)
• 800x600(32bpp)
• 1024x768(32bpp)
• 1280x1024(32bpp) (CSCtx00839)

Symptom Printing from Web GUI does work from Internet Exploder, but not Firefox.

Workaround None.(CSCtc22985)

Symptom When the LSI MegaRAID controller is used with the Cisco Flex Flash, SNMP_Inv_HDD:Disk_IDD N and RN shows 0,0,0 instead of 0,1,2 sequence.

Workaround Use the CIMC Web GUI to query the hard drive inventory.(CSCty26155)

Symptom When the LSI MegaRAID controller is used in conjunction with Cisco Flex Flash card, the SNMP_Inv_HDD:DiskPresence displays missing(11) instead of equipped(10).

Workaround Use the CIMC Web GUI to query the hard drive inventory.(CSCty26198)

Symptom Cisco UCS C220 and UCS C240 servers displays errors when the Power Restore Policy is set to restore-state and an AC power cycle is performed with the host power is ON.

Workaround Set the Power Restore Policy to On with fixed or random delay.(CSCty42040)

Symptom When mapping a removal media using Mac Client, the USB device only supports Read-Only mode.

Workaround Use Windows client or Linux 32 bit client.(CSCty32452)

Symptom After upgrading MegaRAID firmware, sometimes the storage information in the CIMC Web GUI and CLI will be empty.

Workaround Restart the CIMC to get the storage information to be populated in CIMC Web GUI and CLI.(CSCtx08443)

Symptom Occasionally, when BIOS starts, the following message is displayed:

Workaround This message can be ignored.(CSCtx27907)

Symptom Occasionally when CIMC boots, the HTTP Web UI will not start.

Workaround Restart the CIMC.(CSCtx19968)

Symptom When using two PSUs, the host does not reboot or shut down but PSU redundancy events would be seen. But, if both PSUs are faulty, the host will reboot continuously or shutdown.

Workaround None.(CSCtx88937)

Symptom Product ID information is not displayed in Web GUI for PSUs.

Workaround None.This issue will be addressed in next software release for this platform.(CSCtu09488)

Symptom When running the KVM Viewer client on a 64 bit Linux OS, block devices such as a USB stick or floppy drive will have the read only box checked when you open the vMedia tab. Trying to uncheck the read only box will fail, and devices can only be mapped as read only.

Workaround Use a 32 bit Linux OS or Windows OS for the client system running the KVM Viewer application.(CSCty37812)

Symptom When using the KVM Viewer client application with a 64 bit Linux OS, mapping both floppy disk and removable disk at the same time will cause improper functioning of the application that is, the drive data is invalid and/or cannot be read. Even mapping only a single drive (floppy or removable disk) at a time can yield unexpected failures. For example, after mapping and unmapping a USB stick, click on the exit button of the vMedia tab and reopen the vMedia tab. Now, if you try map the device again the vMedia tab will crash and all themapped devices will be unmapped.

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Note Mapping of CD-ROM drives and image files works properly, this problem is observed only when mapping physical Linux block devices such as /dev/sdX.

Workaround Perform the following steps to map physical block devices:

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Step 1 Map only a single physical block device at a time (not both floppy and removable device at a time). This will usually work, but may have occasional unexpected failures. Restart the client if the vMedia tab stops functioning.

Step 2 Generate an img file of the block device contents and map this instead, this has no known issues.

Step 3 Use a 32 bit Linux OS / Windows OS / Mac OS client system to run the KVM Viewer/vMedia application.(CSCty42187)

 

Symptom The KVM viewer version does not display the FCS version, that is, 2.0.0.27. This means the client machine has not downloaded the new.jar file for the KVM/vMedia client and the old client is getting executed. This issue is seen when you use KVM with the old CIMC firmware and then upgraded the CIMC. To check the KVM viewer version, invoke KVM and go to Help >About KVM Viewer. The KVM Viewer version should be 2.0.0.27 for Release 1.4(4a).

Workaround To resolve this issue delete the Java temporary cached files and invoke KVM from CIMC GUI. The Java Control Panel app (javacpl.exe) is in the bin directory of the Java JRE installation.

For Windows, go to in c:\Program Files\Java\<JRE VERSION>\bin and delete the cached Cisco Virtual KVM Console application and re-launch remote presence.

For Linux, go to the Java directory, for example./usr/java/jre1.6.0_26/bin/ControlPanel.

BIOS

Symptom OS installation hangs when installing from Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) environment.

Workaround EFI OS is currently not supported.(CSCtw78721)

Symptom Patrol scrub is disabled when a channel is disabled due to a bad DIMM.

Workaround Replace the bad DIMM. (CSCtx58908)

Symptom When Option ROM run out of space, the POST error 0xA6A0 displays as a critical event.

Workaround In the BIOS setup, disable the Option ROM for adapters for which the Preboot eXecution Environment support is not required.(CSCtx68045)

Symptom The system hangs when you press Control + H. This issue is observed with both the mezzanine card and the 9266 adapter and occurs intermittently but some systems display a high fail rate.

Workaround Perform the following steps:

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Step 1 Restart the host.

Step 2 Load the EFI shell and run the drvcfg -s command.

The Web BIOS gets invoked.(CSCty15505)

 

Symptom The Web BIOS does not respond to mouse clicks.

Workaround Press any key on the keyboard.(CSCtw53469)

Symptom When a bad DIMM (which fails memory initialization) is present in one of the DIMM slots, BIOS may map out the other DIMMs in the same channel as the bad DIMM.

Workaround Remove or replace the bad DIMM.(CSCtx85587)

Symptom When Broadcom 5709 Gigabit Ethernet adapter is plugged into one of the PCIE slots, the server gets stuck at the BIOS post screen during the booting process.

Workaround Upgrade the firmware on the Broadcom 5709 Gigabit Ethernet adapter to version 5.2.7 or later.(CSCtx92042)

LOM

Symptom vMedia disconnects when you try to boot CentOS-6.1 LiveCD.

Workaround None.(CSCtx02553)

Symptom All the onboard LOM port OPROMMs do not get executed during the booting process in C240 server models.

Workaround Restart the system.(CSCty11957)

Symptom When the secondary iSCSI port is configured, booting from the iSCSI target results in kernel panic.

Workaround None.(CSCty19869)

Symptom Pressing the Esc key while the LOM option ROM is getting executed causes the rest of the option ROMs to be skipped.

Workaround None.(CSCty27853)

LSI

Symptom C220 M3 and C240 M3 rack servers populated with the LSI 9266-8i MegaRAID adapter may hang intermittently during BIOS POST and CATERR is reported in the SEL logs.

Workaround To recover from this condition, users will need to reboot the system. (CSCua24918)

Symptom When LSI controller is downgraded, you may view the information, for example, virtual drive, firmware, of the previous version of the LSI controller in the CIMC Web GUI and CLI.

Workaround Restart the host machine so that the correct information is propagated to the CIMC Web GUI and CLI.(CSCtx08449)

Misc

Symptom PSU Failure events are seen after AC Power cycling the system.

Workaround Ignore the PSU failure events seen in SEL immediately after the AC power cycle.(CSCty38769)

VMWare

Symptom Booting from SAN fails with UCS P81E on ESXi 4.1U2 and ESXi 5.0 and a fatal error is seen during installation.

Workaround This issue can be resolved with an asynch FNIC driver version. The custom ISO integrated with the Cisco FNIC driver, for ESXi 4.1 U2 and ESXi 5.0, is available at www.vmware.com.(CSCtx25927)

Symptom Installing ESX/ESXi 4.1 U2 on C220 and C240 servers displays the following error on console:

Workaround Refer to the VMWare Knowledge Base page at VMWare KB.(CSCtw86205)

 

This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the “Related Documentation” section.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)

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