Tag Archives: ESXi

2015 04 20 22 05 11

Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 4 – Upgrading the Firmware

Cisco, VMware, , , , , , , , , ,

My previous posts in the series covered getting the Cisco UCS up and running and into production, and it seems that adding how to upgrade the Firmware on the UCS at the end of the series is best, as you will find yourself needing to do this once the system is in production as well.

Note: Many thanks to Rene again for this simple post helping me through the steps.

Note2: It’s also worth looking through this short article on the do’s and don’t of UCS Firmware updates, from a session held at Cisco Live 2014.

Covered in this post;

  • Pre-reqs
  • Getting the Firmware
  • Upload firmware into UCS Manager
  • Upgrading UCS Manager
  • Upgrading the Fabric Interconnects
  • Upgrading the Blade Servers
Pre-Reqs

Continue reading Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 4 – Upgrading the Firmware →

2015 04 20 22 05 11

Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 2 – from scratch for VMware ESXi

Cisco, VMware, , , , , , , , , , , ,

In my first post, we got as far as setting up the management interface of the Cisco UCS Platform. In this second part, I’ll be covering;

  • Setting up the connectivity
  • Configuring the VLAN connectivity
  • Setting up Port Channels
  • Setting up the Appliance connectivity
  • Configuring LAN policies
  • Configuring VNIC Templates
  • Creating Server Policies
  • Building a Service Profile Template
  • Deploying a Service Profile from a Template
Setting up the connectivity

Continue reading Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 2 – from scratch for VMware ESXi →

VMware Update Manager

Using VMware Update Manager to automatically download Dell Drivers to ESXi

VMware, , , , , , ,

Last year I wrote about how to use VMware Update Manager to download HP Drivers for ESXi,

Since then I’ve also found out you can add the following Dell repository into VMware Update manager;

  • http://vmwaredepot.dell.com/index.xml

2015-03-16_10-01-18

 

Regards

<a href=”https://twitter.com/saintdle”>Dean</a> (<a href=”http://lnkd.in/bUUrNkB”>Linkedin</a>)

hp broken

HP-AMS Driver causes ESXi memory leak

VMware, , , , , , , , , ,

So basically I had a customer hit by a known HP-AMS driver issue (KB2085618), the symptons were as follows;

  • Unable to vMotion a VM to another host, gives “operation timed out error”

2014-11-10_10-36-15

  • If power off VM, vMotion a machine to another host, and then power on, you get the following error “Could not start VMX: msg.vmk.status.VMK_NO_MEMORY”

2014-11-06_10-42-49

ESXi memory leak

This issue is caused by a memory leak in the driver which fills the SWAP memory of the ESXi host, making it unable to response to any requests at all,

For example, trying to enable SSH;

2014-11-11_09-08-27

The Fix

Continue reading HP-AMS Driver causes ESXi memory leak →

VMware Update Manager

Using VMware Update Manager to automatically download HP Drivers to ESXi

HP, VMware, , , , , , ,

I stumbled across this little gem of a post yesterday, I tried to use the WordPress reblog feature, but it’s not working, so thanks to Kalle who wrote it.

So I’m going to blog it using screenshots from an environment I’ve set it up on.

With HP, you need to use the customized ESXi image to ensure you have all the correct drivers installed so ESXi works properly, which includes that sometimes pesky HPSA driver.

VIB links updated for November 2015 changes to HP Enterprise

What you can do

So basically you can add in the HP Drivers repository into your VMware Update Manager configuration, meaning you can pull down the drivers specific to your HP ESXi hosts for installation.

Keeping your environment happy and up-to-date.

How to set it up

Continue reading Using VMware Update Manager to automatically download HP Drivers to ESXi →