Managing the Capability Catalog in Cisco UCS Central

This chapter includes the following sections:

Capability Catalog

The Capability Catalog is a set of tunable parameters, strings, and rules. Cisco UCS uses the catalog to update the display and configurability of components such as newly qualified DIMMs and disk drives for servers.

The catalog is divided by hardware components, such as the chassis, CPU, and local disk. You can use the catalog to view the list of providers available for that component. There is one provider per hardware component. Each provider is identified by the vendor, model (PID), and revision. For each provider, you can also view details of the equipment manufacturer and the form factor.

For information about which hardware components are dependent upon a particular catalog release, see the component support tables in the Service Notes for the B- Series servers. For information about which components are introduced in a specific release, see the Cisco UCS Release Notes.

Contents of the Capability Catalog

The contents of the Capability Catalog include the following:

Implementation-Specific Tunable Parameters

  • Power and thermal constraints

  • Slot ranges and numbering

  • Adapter capacities

Hardware-Specific Rules

  • Firmware compatibility for components such as the BIOS, CIMC, RAID controller, and adapters

  • Diagnostics

  • Hardware-specific reboot

User Display Strings

  • Part numbers, such as the CPN, PID/VID

  • Component descriptions

  • Physical layout/dimensions

  • OEM information

Updates to the Capability Catalog

Capability Catalog updates are included in each Cisco UCS Infrastructure Software Bundle. Unless otherwise instructed by Cisco Technical Assistance Center, you only need to activate the Capability Catalog update after you've downloaded, updated, and activated a Cisco UCS Infrastructure Software Bundle.

As soon as you activate a Capability Catalog update, Cisco UCS immediately updates to the new baseline catalog. You do not have to perform any further tasks. Updates to the Capability Catalog do not require you to reboot or reinstall any component in a Cisco UCS domain.

Each Cisco UCS Infrastructure Software Bundle contains a baseline catalog. In rare circumstances, Cisco releases an update to the Capability Catalog between Cisco UCS releases and makes it available on the same site where you download firmware images.


Note

The Capability Catalog version is determined by the version of Cisco UCS that you are using. For information about Capability Catalog releases supported by specific Cisco UCS releases, see the Release Notes for Cisco UCS Software accessible through the Cisco UCS B-Series Servers Documentation Roadmap available at the following URL: http:/​/​www.cisco.com/​go/​unifiedcomputing/​b-series-doc.

Configuring a Capability Catalog Update for a Cisco UCS Domain

You can create only one capability catalog per each Cisco UCS Domain group in Cisco UCS Central. All the member Cisco UCS domains of a group will run the same firmware version.


Note

You can configure capability catalog update from domain group root or at the domain group level. When you update the capability catalog at the domain group root level, if the domain groups under the root do not have a capability catalog defined, will get the same capability catalog version.

Procedure
    Step 1   On the menu bar, click Operations Management.
    Step 2   In the Navigation pane, expand Domain Groups > Domain Groups Root > Firmware Management.
    Step 3   Click Capability Catalog.
    Step 4   In the Work pane, click Create.
    Step 5   In the Version table, select the version of the capability catalog you want to associate with the Cisco UCS domains included in the selected Cisco UCS Central domain group.

    The capability catalog version selected here overrides the version inherited from any parent groups, if an inherited version exists.

    Step 6   Click Save.

    Cisco UCS Central triggers the capability catalog update in the specified Cisco UCS domains.