Supported Upgrade Paths from Release 6.0

The following are the supported upgrade paths to Cisco UCS Director, Release 6.5(0.4):

• From Release 6.0(1.3) to Release 6.5(0.1) to Release 6.5(0.4)

• From Release 6.0(1.2) to Release 6.5(0.0) to Release 6.5(0.4)

• From Release 6.0(1.1) to Release 6.5(0.0) to Release 6.5(0.4)

• From Release 6.0(1.0) to Release 6.5(0.0) to Release 6.5(0.4)

Collecting Diagnostics in a Multi-Node Setup

The Collect Diagnostics option is supported in a multi-node setup to collect information required for debugging purposes.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Shell Guide, Release 6.5.

Changes in the Administrator Portal User Interface

In Cisco UCS Director release 6.5 and release 6.5(0.1), the user interface has a + sign to expand or collapse a tabular field in which you could select one or more fields using a check box. In some instances, after selecting the fields, you need to click Validate to proceed.

With this patch release, the above behavior has been replaced with a Select button. The user interface now displays a Select button. When you click this button, a new screen displays a list of items. In this screen, select the items using the check boxes to proceed with completing the task.

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Support

The following changes were added to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure support in this release:

• Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure: Release 3.0

Microsoft Hyper-V Versions

The following changes were added to Microsoft Hyper-V version support in this release:

• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2016 Rollup 2

• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2016 Rollup 3

VMware vSphere Versions

The following changes were added to VMware vSphere support in this release:

• Support for VMware vSphere vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1

• Support for VMware Site Recovery Manager version 6.1.

New Administrative Portal

This release introduces a new and improved HTML-5 based administrative portal that replaces the previously available user interface. When you log in to Cisco UCS Director, by default, the new user interface is displayed. The earlier version of the interface, now referred to as the classic view, is still available, but will be removed in a subsequent release. The following are some of the key features of the new interface:

• Change in the navigation menu—In earlier releases, you could access pages using the main menu bar. The main menu bar is no longer visible, and is now available as a side bar. You can use your mouse or the cursor to hover over an option on the side navigation bar, and then click any of the menu options.

• Absence of user interface labels—The user interface no longer includes labels for actions such as Add, Edit, Delete, Export, Filter, and so on. These actions are represented only with icons. If you use your mouse or cursor to hover over the icon, the label displays the action you can perform using that icon.

• Using Dashboard to Access Detailed Reports—If you have enabled the Dashboard, then it is the first page that you see when you log in to Cisco UCS Director. Typically, you can use this dashboard to add important or frequently accessed report widgets. Now, you can click any of the reports that are displayed on the Dashboard, and immediately access the page in the user interface where more detailed information is displayed

• Enhancements to reporting capabilities—You can add individual pie charts and bar graph reports to the Dashboard or you can export these reports in PDF, CSV, or KLS formats. In addition, you can search for a report from the Dashboard.

• Context-sensitive Online Help—If you click the Help icon in the user interface, the online help system displays information on the screen that you currently are accessing.

• Customized Icons for management—Cisco UCS Director supports customization and management of catalog icons, action-related icons, and status-related icons. Each icon set in the system contains several images that are available by default. You can change the icons that are displayed for either the catalogs, actions or status. You can either upload a new image and set it as the icon, or you can choose a different icon from the set of system-provided icons.

• ReportMeta data RestAPI URL in HTML-5 is encoded—You can use this URL as is. If you want to decode this URL, then you can use any URL decoder available online.

• After upgrading from prior versions to Release 6.5, the administrator must update the approval email templates with the HTML-5 URL for approval. If this change is not made, the templates will re-direct to the classic view page. The change in the email template must look like the following:

  out.println("<a href='"+ "https" + "://" + request.getDataObject().getSettings().getCuicIpAddress() + "/app/ux/index.html?filter_entryId_"+ request.getDataObject().getEntryId()+"'>link</a>");

Important

The HTML-5 user interface does not support themes or the topology view. If you select a theme in the HTML-5 user interface, it is applicable for the classic view user interface also.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

Changes in Configuring a Bare Metal Server Provisioning Policy

The following are changes made in this release:

• The scope of the policy can be set to include either servers or server pools.

• While using the policy to configure servers, you can allow for the user to select specific servers.

• You can now select one or more Windows OS images for the server.

• You can select a static IP pool policy to assign an IP address for the server.

• You can select a host name validation policy to validate the server host name for the bare metal server.

In addition, after you create a bare metal server provisioning policy, you can validate it from the user interface, and determine if there are any issues with the policy.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

Changes to the Stack View report for a VM

With this release, the Stack View Report for a VM has the following changes:

• If there are multiple devices in the report, you can use the drop-down list to select a specific device.

• You can choose to view additional details of a device in the report.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

Enhancements to Managing Users

This release include the following changes to managing users:

• Introduced the All Users Login History option, using which you can review login-related information for all users in the system.

• Introduction of session management capability for users—As an administrator, you can configure the maximum number of concurrent sessions for users in the system.

• While adding a user role, you can enable or disable the availability of roles.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

Database Support on a Non-Root Disk

When you install or upgrade to Cisco UCS Director, Release 6.5, the database is now installed on a secondary, non-root disk in the virtual machine (VM). This secondary disk is automatically created when you install Cisco UCS Director, Release 6.5. When upgrading, you must first create a secondary disk that meets the requirements documented in the Cisco UCS Director Upgrade Guide.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Installation on VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V and the Cisco UCS Director Upgrade Guide.

ASA/ASAv Configuration through APIC Function Profiles and Service Graphs

For systems that include network management through ACI, you can now configure NAT, static route, and IP address parameters in an APIC function profile. You can then add this function profile to an L4-L7 service graph.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director APIC Management Guide.

Support for NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF)

Cisco UCS Director now provides support for NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) with ONTAP 9.0 and 9.1. In addition,

Support for EMC Unity

Cisco UCS Director now provides support for orchestration automation, management, monitoring, and reporting for supported EMC Unity storage arrays.

Enhancements to Cisco UCS Manager Support

The following support was added for Cisco UCS Director for Cisco UCS Manager in this release:

• More than one Cisco UCS Manager account can be added for a pod, such as FlexPod, Vblock, or VSPEX.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Management Guide for Cisco UCS Manager.

Server License Tracking for Cisco UCS Central

In previous releases, Cisco UCS Director tracked the number of servers against the available licenses only when they were managed through Cisco UCS Manager . Starting with release 6.5, Cisco UCS Director also tracks the available licenses when the servers are managed through Cisco UCS Central . A warning message informs you when you have exceeded the limit. However, you can continue to manage these servers until the grace period ends.

In addition, now you can Manage and Unmanage the servers directly from Cisco UCS Central account by accessing the Discovered Servers under All UCS Domains. Make sure that you choose the Selected Servers option under server management, while adding a Cisco UCS Central account.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Management Guide for Cisco UCS Central.

Enhancements to PowerShell Agent

This release introduces the following support for PowerShell Agent:

• A new Execute Native PowerShell Command Task. It helps you execute PowerShell scripts locally on the PowerShell Agent server. This task overcomes the limitation where some of the third- party cmdlets are not executable in remote sessions.

• The Execute PowerShell Command Task now provides an option to choose from various authentication mechanisms other than the default.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director PowerShell Agent Installation and Configuration Guide.

Enhancements Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data in Cisco UCS Director

The enhancements to Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data in Cisco UCS Director include the following:

• Support for CentOS 7.2 for deploying Big Data clusters

• Support for Spark services for Cloudera and Hortonworks clusters.

• Support Splunk 6.4.2, 6.4.3, and 6.5 cluster versions.

• Introduced an option to enable security for the MapR clusters.

• Introduced an option for service end users to create Big Data clusters using Advanced Catalog.

• Support for Kafka services for Cloudera and Hortonworks clusters.

• Support for IBM Big Insights 4.2 cluster version.

• Introduced an option to enable high availability support for Hortonworks cluster.

• Introduced an option to create Hadoop or Splunk cluster with flexible network configuration.

• Introduced an option to customize the Service Role Entry template for Splunk clusters.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data Management Guide.

Enhancements to Bare Metal Agent Installation and Configuration

In this release, the following features and enhancements have been introduced for managing and configuring BMA accounts:

• An option to upload the OS images to a Bare Metal Agents account and provision the OS images.

• An option to create a PXE boot request by choosing Administration > Physical Accounts and clicking Bare Metal Agents.

• Support for Windows Hyper-V 2016 Baremetal OS installation

• Support for vSphere/ESXi 6.5 Baremetal OS installation

• Support for multi-Windows version deployment from single BMA—Bare Metal Agent adopts the Microsoft Windows PXE boot process, which maintains a single WinPE for supporting multiple windows versions.

• Support for viewing network interface details for a Bare Metal Agent account.

• Additional fields for setting up a PXE boot task for Microsoft Windows. The new fields are Server IP Configuration Type, Server Address, Server Net Mask, and Server Gateway.

• Support for iPXE-BIOS and iPXE-UEFI network boot firmware.

• Support for viewing, editing, cloning, and swapping the OS configuration file details.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Bare Metal Agent Installation and Configuration Guide.

Enhancements to the End User Portal

In this release, the menu bar is moved from the top of the landing page to the left side.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director End User Portal Guide.

Enhancements to Custom Tasks

This release introduces the following features:

• A Java editor for the custom task script, which validates the CloupiaScript code and shows an error message with a solution.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Custom Task Getting Started Guide.

• A CustomTask Script Analyzer—Analyses the classes and methods of the Cloupiascripts in a custom task, and provides an analysis report that includes custom task status (for example, Executed, Not executed), used methods list, and incompatible methods list.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Upgrade Guide.

Enhancements to Open Automation

This release introduces the following supports:

• REST API support—The Open Automation compute framework provides REST API support for adaptor- and listener-based APIs

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Open Automation Cookbook.

• Input validation using controllers—Support use of Controller classes to validate input to REST APIs.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Open Automation Cookbook.

• Icon support— Includes action icons for the UI when you deploy an Open Automation module.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Open Automation Cookbook.

• Enable new modules without restarting— Activate newly deployed modules without restarting Cisco UCS Director.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Open Automation Cookbook.

• Troubleshooting solutions—Provides solutions for problems that you may encounter while exposing the REST API support for Open Automation modules in Cisco UCS Director

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Open Automation Troubleshooting Guide.

Enhancements to SCVMM and VMware Virtualization

This release introduces the following features:

• Support for VMware vCenter 6.5

• Support for SCVMM (Hyper-V) 2016 and Windows 2016 Guest OS

• VMware Content Library Support—This release introduces support for discovery and viewing reports for VMware content library templates. You can also provision VMs using content library templates.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

• VMRC HTML5 Console—This release introduces the ability to launch a VMRC HTML5 console that is web browser and plug-in independent.

  Note	The HTML5 VMRC SDK is supported with VMware vCenter version 6.0 or later. The VMRC HTML5 console will not launch if VNC is enabled on the virtual machine. For information on how to solve this problem, see the Cisco UCS Director Troubleshooting Guide.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

• VIX Task Enhancements—The Execute VIX Scripts task supports the option to use Guest Operation APIs instead of VIX APIs.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VM Guest Customization Guide.

• Guest Operations Task—This release introduces the Guest Operations task that supports existing VIX functionality with the ability to upload and execute files on the guest.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VM Guest Customization Guide.

• Enhancements to VNC Console Management—This release introduces the Launch VNC Console action, to launch the VNC console independent of the Launch VM Client action. You can also enable a task to automatically unconfigure the VNC console.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

• VM name and hostname uniqueness check—This release introduces the ability to disable the VM name and hostname uniqueness validation check.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

• Unmount ISO image from CD or DVD drive—This release introduces the ability to unmount an ISO image already attached to a CD or DVD drive on the VM.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide.

• Configure cores per socket during VM provisioning—This release introduces the ability to define cores per socket in the computing policy for use when creating a service request, deploying a VM, cloning a VM, or provisioning a VM using an orchestration workflow.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide and the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

• VMkernel NIC enhancements—This release introduces support for VMware vMotion and traffic options supported by VMware vSphere on a VMkernel NIC.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

• VM deployment enhancements—This release introduces the ability to deploy a new VM from a template listed in the images report.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

• Credential policy enhancements—This release introduces the ability specify a credential policy to use when adding a VMware cloud.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

• VM migration enhancements—This release introduces the ability to migrate a VM between datacenters and modify the VM port group within a VMware vCenter server.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director VMware vSphere Management Guide.

Enhancement to Orchestration

This release introduces the following features:

• Workflow Schedule Management—You can schedule the same workflow to execute multiple times. Previously, only one schedule could exist per workflow.

• Resource Locking— You can lock and unlock resources in a workflow using special tasks that acquire and release named semaphores.

• File Upload through Workflow Input—You can upload files to Cisco UCS Director using a workflow task using a special input type, fileUpload.

• Enhancements to Workflow Designer—The HTML5 Workflow Designer has several new features that ease navigation, such as:

  • Zoom controls to reduce and enlarge your view of the workflow.

  • A Fit to Window action that scales the workflow to your screen with a single click

  • A Navigator to pan the view window within the work area

  The Workflow Designer now also displays counts of conditional, custom, and total tasks.

• Header-based Search for Workflows—You can search for and launch workflow in the Workflow Designer from anywhere in Cisco UCS Director.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Orchestration Guide.

Enhancements to REST API

This release introduces the following features:

• Requesting JSON API using HTTP/HTTPs POST—Provided instructions on how to pass the JSON API request using the HTTP POST method.

• REST API support for managing service request—Added the following API: userAPIGetServiceRequestLogEntries

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director REST API Cookbook.

• Access XML REST API—Provides a list of APIs to invoke XML REST API to perform basic CRUD operations.

  Documented in the Cisco UCS Director CloupiaScript Cookbook.

• Role-based access for XML-based version 2 APIs with the URL context of /api/v2.

  Service end users cannot execute the GET Operations with these APIs. Also, service end users can perform the create, update and delete operations using the REST APIs only if they can perform the same operation using the graphical user interface of Cisco UCS Director. If these users cannot perform a create, update or delete operation in the user interface, then they cannot perform these actions using the REST APIs either.

Enhancements to Managing Application Containers

This release introduces the following features:

• Use Linked Clone in VM—Provides support to deploy linked VMs which are two or more related VMs that share virtual disk storage.

• Provision a VM using Content Library Template—Provides support to choose a VM template from the content library VM templates for VM provisioning.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Application Container Guide.

Enhancements to Working with Custom Tasks

This release introduces the following features:

• Using API Operations from CloupiaScript—Provides the guidelines for using API operations from CloupiaScript.

• Java editor for the custom task script—Validates the CloupiaScript code and shows an error message with a solution.

• Access output of a previous task—Provides two ways to use outputs of a previous tasks in other tasks in a workflow.

• GitHub integration with custom tasks—Enables you to download custom task code from files in a GitHub repository to custom tasks that you create. Cisco UCS Director supports only GitHub (github.com or an enterprise GitHub instance). It does not support other Git hosting services such as BitBucket, GitLab, Perforce, or Codebase.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Custom Task Getting Started Guide.

Enhancements to the Cisco UCS Director Shell Interface

This release introduces the following features:

• Support for SFTP and SCP protocols for database backup and restore.

• Introduced an option to enable and disable the HTTPS access.

• Support for secure options like SFTP and SCP while applying a patch to Cisco UCS Director.

• Support for resetting MYSQL user password in a Multi-Node setup and Standalone setup.

• Support for digital signing of software images.

• Introduced an option to limit the number of concurrent sessions per user by terminating the active GUI sessions.

Documented in the Cisco UCS Director Shell Guide.

Modified Workflow Name

In this release, the Create and Add IBM LUN as NFS Datastore has been modified to Add new NFS datastore to ESXi on V7000.

Cisco Server Support

The following changes were added to Cisco server support in this release:

• Cisco UCS Manager: 3.1(3*) and 3.2(1)

• Cisco UCS Central: 2.0(1*)

• Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers (Standalone through Rack accounts): Cisco IMC Supervisor, Release 2.2

• Cisco UCS E-Series Servers (Standalone through Rack accounts): Cisco IMC Supervisor, Release 2.2

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Support

The following changes were added to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure support in this release:

• Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure: Release 2.2(2f*)

NetApp Storage Support

The following changes were added to NetApp storage support in this release:

• NetApp AFF (ALL Flash FAS-ONTAP): 9.0 and 9.1

EMC Storage Support

The following changes were added to EMC storage support in this release:

• EMC Unity: UnityOS: 4.1.1.91.38882

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Support

The following support was added for Cisco HyperFlex System in this release:

• Cisco HX-Series Server: HX220C-M4, HX240C-M4

• Cisco HX Data Platform: Release 1.8(1c) and Release 2.5(1a)