Category Archives: HP

IMC Header

HP IMC 7.2 – won’t backup config of Cisco Nexus 9K switch

Background

I have a customer who is using HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC) to monitor their switching environment. Originally they were using all HP Switching, but have slowly moved away during a refresh cycle and now use Cisco Switching, a mix between 2960X and Nexus switching.

The issue

When changing the HP IMC (Basic edition licence) over to manage the Cisco switching, everything went fine, apart from the Nexus 9K switches, which were not detected properly nor could be backed up. We contacted HP, who said the 9K switches are supported, but they would not give us any further details until we had a software support contract in place.

When we ran a manual backup of the switch we would receive the following error message;

Failed to send the configuration file from the device to the iMC Server by TFTP
HP IMC Cisco Nexus switch failed backupHP IMC Cisco Nexus switch failed to send configuration file from device
The cause

The cause is down to the sysOID seen by IMC, it correctly see’s the vendor a Cisco switch, but does not identify it as a Nexus switch. The default settings for a Cisco Switch in IMC is to use CatOS commands for any operation.

HP IMC Cisco Unknown Switch SYSOID Continue reading HP IMC 7.2 – won’t backup config of Cisco Nexus 9K switch

fan replacement

HP FlexFabric Switches – AirFlow direction is not prefered

Quick note,

Installed some HP FlexFabric 5700 switches the other day and I was getting a red LED on the front, and a status message in the CLI

HPE DEV/1/FAN_DIRECTION_NOT_PREFERRED: -Slot; Fan 1 airflow direction is not preferred on slow 1, please check it.

This is a pretty common issue if you chose Back-to-Front fans for your build.

The part numbers for the 5700 series are as follows (taken from this document);

HP 58x0AF Bck(pwr) – Frt(ports) Fan Tray  – JC682A
HP 58x0AF Frt(ports) – Bck(pwr) Fan Tray  – JC683A

The fix is quite simple

To display the airflow configuration;

display fan slot {slot No,}

To change the configuration

Fan prefer-direction slow 1 port-to-power

Below is a screenshot showing the error, the display command and the resolution. Continue reading HP FlexFabric Switches – AirFlow direction is not prefered

c03601945

HP 2920 Switch – Reboot issue on firmware ver 15.18.0006 #vDM30in30

Updated 25.11.15

Firmware WB.15.18.0007 resolves the issue, see below


A colleague of mine found an issue with the latest HP 2920 switch firmware.
If you create VLANs using the CLI Menu, the switch reboots and the configuration is not saved.

We have reported this to HP, but is currently being treated as a non critical issue as when creating a VLAN via the web interface or native CLI, the issue doesn’t happen.

We have also noticed on this firmware the switch seems to be less responsive. Luckily we had a few units in stock that we could replicate this issue on, and can confirm downgrading to the previous firmware version removes the issue.

A quick cheers to my colleague Marco for finding and researching this issue.

The issue

Switch: HP 2920-48G-POE+

Primary Image    :    12852982 08/12/15 WB.15.18.0006

Software revision  : WB.15.18.0006

  1.        Go to the Main Menu
  2.        Select (2) Switch Configuration…
  3.        Select (8) VLAN Menu…
  4.        Select (3) VLAN Port Assignment
  5.        Select Edit
  6.        Modify the tagging mode for a port
  7.        Select Save
  8.        Switch reboots and doesn’t save configuration

Hopefully HP will release a fix for this firmware soon, as mentioned we have recreated this issue in production and test.

The Fix

The following information was provided by HP Support. Continue reading HP 2920 Switch – Reboot issue on firmware ver 15.18.0006 #vDM30in30

2015 07 27 18 17 53

HP Virtual Connect – Upgrade from version 3.30 to 4.41

Hi,

Only a quick post, but after my last bashing of HP virtual connect. I’ve had to endevour another upgrade for a different customer. This time with two HP chassis that are connected together.

For this customer they are on version 3.30 and need to upgrade to the latest version 4.41.

After speaking with HP support, the suggested upgrade path is;

3.60 / 3.70 / 4.10 / 4.20 / 4.31 / 4.41

For me the each firmware took around 35 to 45 minutes to complete. And you need “Virtual Connect Support Utility 1.11.0” to upgrade to 4.31 and above.

Note: that if you use the vcsu.exe tool and have mutliple flex-10 modules connected together in a domain, the firmware will update all the modules at once, you cannot upgrade just 2 modules of 4, for example.

How to update the Virtual Connect Manager

Note: Please plan downtime for this, as in my case it took everything offline whilst updating both modules.

So to update the Virtual Connect Manager, leave the web interface, as you don’t do it there, you need to download the “Virtual Connect Support Utility”, you can find the latest version here.

To do this, you open up the command interface,

2014-08-13_09-37-45

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As you can see this launches a command prompt in the install area of the utility.

1. Type vcsu.exe and enter

2. Type update and enter

3. Enter the IP address of the Onboard Administrator, username and password.

4. Drag your firmware file from its location into the CMD prompt window and this will automatically out the file location in for you.

4. Click through the options until it says “Initializing, please wait… [Step 1 of 2]”

5. When prompted it will tell you its discovered the Virtual Connect domain, enter the username and password for the Virtual Connect Manager

6. Enter yes after confirming the version you are on and version you are going to.

7. Once done it will tell you its completed and where the log files are loaded.

Here is a full screenshot of the process, with the steps highlighted in yellow with green marks for easy identification.

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Things to know about the Virtual Connect Support Utility

it saves everything in your temp location, so where it tells you it’s saved the log, copy the location and open it up

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So it doesn’t just output a file which is the copy of your update session, which in this case is called “vcsu-15044.log”

It saves a copy of your Virtual Connect Manager settings before the upgrade, of which mine was called “vcConfig-8895406-BLE01_vc_domain-201408130822

And finally there is the Support Info output which can be used by HP support to determine the status of your hardware before and after the firmware update “vcSupportInfo-8895406-BLE01_vc_domain-201408130823

If you run the “collect” command, then it produces an output to the temp location for the following files

– Session output

– ShowAll of OA

– ShowAll of Virtual Connect Manager

2014-08-13_10-08-11
Regards

Dean

hp ilo chip

Setting iLO IP Address via ESXi CLI

HP iLO is a great tool to have, remote console access, unfortunately it is sometimes forgotten by engineers and technicians to be configured. Which is a pain when you then need remote access to the ESXi.

So here is how to configure the HP iLO IP address using the ESXCLI via SSH.

  1. Turn on your SSH for the host
  • Configuration
  • Security Profile
  • SSH
  • Start

2014-11-11_23-36-26 Continue reading Setting iLO IP Address via ESXi CLI