“The Update is Not Applicable to Your Computer” When Install KB3046101

  HPE 3PAR upgrading team usually sends a per-requisites before upgrading. One thing in the guide incorrect is the Windows 2012 required patch KB3046101.     You may see error below when you install the path on Windows 2012 server.    
The update is not applicable to your computer
      The reason is the version of mpio.sys and msdsm.sys on your server is higher than 6.3.9600.17809. Usually, because the server installed KB3121261 already. You can ignore KB3046101.

Vlan ‘xxx’ resolved to unsupported VLAN ID in Cisco UCS Manager

You may need only 1 IP address for blade console in Cisco UCS Manager. You can follow Understanding “Management IP” of Cisco UCS Manager to configure it. You may see warning “Vlan ‘xxx’ resolved to unsupported VLAN ID” when you delete existing inbound and outbound IP pools if you are trying to clean up existing management IP pools.

That’s because inbound IP address for blade is not cleaned. You have to go to “Equipment” -> “Chassis” -> Target chassis -> “Servers” -> Target server -> Go to “Inventory” tab -> “CIMC” tab -> Click “Change Inbound Management IP” -> Remove existing VLAN and IP pool.

You will see inband IP tab is blank once it’s saved. Please note, the IP address reassign back after 1 minute if you clicked “Delete Inband Configuration” instead of “Change Inbound Managemnt IP“.

Understanding “Management IP” of Cisco UCS Manager

IP address for KVM in Cisco UCS Manager is different with HPE servers. It may assign multiple IP addresses to same blade if you don’t configure it properly. In my case each blade gets 3 IP addresses!

There are actually 3 types of IP address for KVM. (Cisco manual says 2):

  • Outbound Management IPs.
  • Inbound Management IPs for Blades.
  • Inbound Management IPs for Service Profiles.

Outbound Management IP” is default for KVM. Every new deployed blade will try to get a DHCP IP address over Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect management port in same VLAN.

The confusion is the 2nd and 3rd IPs.  “Inbound Management IPs for Blades” is from “hardware” perspective. “Inbound Management IPs for Service Profiles” is from “logical” perspective.

If you go to Equipment -> Chassis -> blade -> Click the KVM to go console. You get console over either Outbound Management IP or Inbound Management IPs for Blades.

If you go to Servers -> Service Profiles -> Click the KVM of a service profile. You get console over either Outbound Management IP or Inbound Management IPs for Service Profiles.

If you want to configure just 1 IP for a blade whatever it’s for hardware or service profile. You need to do following:

  1. Delete the range of the default ext-mgmt in IP Pools of LAN node in Cisco UCS Manager.
  2. Create a new inbound IP pool and a VLAN group without uplink.
  3. Choose the VLAN and inbound IP pool in LAN Cloud -> Global Policies -> Inbound Profile.
  4. Assign the VLAN and inbound IP pool to templates or service profile.

Refer to Setting the Management IP Address of Cisco UCS Manager manual for detail.

BTW, you may see Vlan ‘xxx’ resolved to unsupported VLAN ID in Cisco UCS Manager when you clean up existing IP pool and create new inbound pool.

“x/xx on FI-A is connected by a unknown server device” on Cisco UCS

You may see following errors in ‘info’ category of error messages in the Cisco UCS Manager after upgrading infrastructure firmware to 3.2.x.

“x/xx on FI-A is connected by a unknown server device”

This is bug documented in CSCvk76095. You have to reset the port on FI to fix it.

  1. Go to “Equipment” in Cisco UCS Manager.
  2. Go to “Fabric Interconnects” -> Go to the corresponding FI.
  3. Right-click the port x/xx -> Choose “Disable“.
  4. You will see multiple major faults. Wait for 5 seconds.
  5. Right click the port x/xx -> Choose “Enable“.
  6. All warnings disappeared after 5 mins. You may still see the warning in GUI due to cache. Relogin and check.

This change impacts to one link between IOM and the FI port. You need downtime if the IOM only has a single path. I don’t see any impact to ESXi blades in the pod.

Connect to New Provisioned Raspberry Pi Less than $3

The IP configuration of new provisoined Raspberry Pi struggled me a long time. I need to connect to a monitor so I login to system and configure IP address. The problem was I don’t have monitor. I only have a laptop.

Last year, my old laptop dead. I connected the laptop monitor to a HDMI board to my Raspberry Pi. It’s not a low cost solution, it costed me more than $10. And the monitor, cables and board looks uglily.

IMG_1844

Actually there is another solution to leveraging laptop keyboard and monitor. It’s serials port to console. Something similar like when you configure Cisco network switches. Following is how to do it. I achieve that on Raspberry Pi 2.

  1. You need to buy a USB to TTL device with chipset CP2102.
  2. Connect the pins to Raspberry Pi 2. Refer here for GPIO layout.
    TXD > Pi RXD Pin #10 (GPIO 16)
    RXD > Pi TXD Pin #08 (GPIO 15)
    GND > Pi GND Pin #6
  3. Connect the USB to laptop. You will see a device in ‘Device Manager’ needs drivers.
  4. Download driver and install.
  5. Download Putty and install.
  6. Open Putty and “Serial”.
  7. “Serial line” is COM3 or COM4.
  8. “Speed” is 115200.

The USB to TTL I bought on Taobao (Chinese version of Aliexpress). It’s around $1.2 including shipping.

Show CDP Neighbor of Cisco UCS Uplinks

There are two ways to know which network switch ports the network uplinks of Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects are connected to.

By CLI

  • SSH to the Cisco UCS Manager.
  • Connect to FI-A.
# connect nxos a
  • Show neighbor of network uplinks.
# show cdp neighbor interface ethernet <port num>

By PowerShell

  • Make sure Cisco PowerTool (For UCS Manager) is installed.
  • Enabling the Information Policy via UCSM GUI.
    • Go to “Equipment” -> “Policies” tab -> “Global Policies” tab -> “Info Policy” area.
    • Change to “Enabled“. (No impact to running blades)
  • Open a PowerShell window.
  • Connect to the UCS Manager.
# Connect-Ucs <UCS FQDN>
  • Show CDP neighbor details.
# Get-UcsNetworkLanNeighborEntry

Side notes

Following command can shows network switch name, network switch ports and FI ports

# Get-UcsNetworkLanNeighborEntry | Select deviceid,remoteinterface,localinterface

If you prefer to enable the “Info Policy” by PowerShell, run following command

# Get-UcsTopInfoPolicy | Set-UcsTopInfoPolicy -State enabled -Force

“default Keyring’s certificate is invalid” in Cisco UCS Manager

You may see following error in Cisco UCS Manager:

default Keyring’s certificate is invalid

The reason is Admin -> Key Management -> KeyRing default is expired. It’s not possible to delete or change the KeyRing in GUI. You have to log in to SSH of Cisco UCS Manager and run following commands (The strings after “#”):

lab-B# scope security
lab-B /security # scope keyring default
lab-B /security/keyring # set regenerate yes
lab-B /security/keyring* # commit-buffer
lab-B /security/keyring #

This will result in a disconnect of the Cisco UCS Manager GUI on your client computer. Just refreshing the page after 5 seconds. It’s no impact to blades.

A Huge Amount of Warnings of “Image is Deleted” in Cisco UCS Manager

A few days ago, I deleted some older firmware packages in Cisco UCS Manager. Suddenly more than 100 warnings were generated. The error messages are similar below:

blade-controller image with vendor Cisco System Inc……is deleted

Cause: image-deleted

Clearly, it’s triggered due to packages deletion. But all of my service profiles and service profile templates were using existing firmware packages. The deleted packages were not been used anywhere.

I also deleted download tasks and cleaned up everything I can. The warnings still persisted. I figured out it’s caused by the default firmware policy when I read a blog article.

In case you are facing same issue. Please go to Servers -> Policies -> Host Firmware Packages -> default ->  Click Modify Package Versions -> Change it to available version.

 

Cisco UCS Blade Cannot Get IP Address for KVM

You may see “The IP address to reach the server is not set” when clicking the KVM console in Cisco UCS Manager. The issue persists even Cisco UCS Manager has enough IP addresses for management. Re-acknowledge or reset CIMC cannot fix the problem.

The fix procedure is go to “Equipment” -> Select the server -> “General” tab -> “Server Maintenance” -> “Decommission” the server.

Wait for the decommission completed, then re-acknowledge the server. IP address will be assigned to the server after the acknowledge process is completed.

UCS Manager UI Fonts Size on 4K Screen

Older UCS Manager uses Java application. The UI fonts could be extremely small on high DPI screen. The fix is:

  1. Go to “C:Program Files (x86)Javajre1.8.0_171bin“.
  2. Go to “Properties” of “jp2launcher.exe“.
  3. Compatibility” tab -> “Change high DPI settings“.
  4. Check “Override high DPI scaling behavior….“.
  5. Select “System (Enhanced)” or “System“.