UCS 5108 Firmware Upgrade from 2.2(1b) to 2.2(6e) - B Series

[Hieu Cao]

It's my first time of upgrading the UCS firmware, and I've read many documentations, videos, release notes,  and I would like to know if there's any gotchas that I should watch out for.  I am planning to perform the firmware upgrade in the next couple of weeks

I've a couple of UCS 5108s configured in HA in my data center.

Has anyone been able to upgrade your the UCS 5108 ( B200-M3 blades and FI 6248UP ) firmware from 2.2(1b) to 2.2(6e) successfully? 

Thanks for your time and input !

[Walter Dey · Accepted solution]

Hi Hieu

I don't see any problems; your path is 2.2.x to 2.2.y

For a complete list of upgrade docs, see

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/servers-unified-computing/ucs-manager/products-installation-guides-list.html

I would just recommend to use autoinstall.

First autoinstall infrastructure (UCSM,FI, IOM) and then

Autoinstall server

I hope you have a Maintenance Policy in place, which asks for a ACK.

Walter.

[Hieu Cao]

Walter - I greatly appreciate your time and input!

Thanks!

Hieu

[csco12327700]

Hi Walter,

Thanks for your response. I already had a look at the link you provided but cannot see any document "Upgrading Cisco UCS from Release 2.1.x to Release 2.2.y". All documents are "Upgrading Cisco UCS from Release 2.x to Release 2.y".

I have done upgrades before that involved upgrading from 2.0 to 2.1 to 2.2.1b. Now I wish to upgrade from 2.2.1b to 2.2.6e. I guess because this is within the same 2.2 version, it is going to be a simple autoinstall that does not need too much planning?

Table 2 (Page 5) in Release Notes for Cisco UCS Software, Release 2.2 says this is a valid non-disruptive upgrade. Has anyone actually seen or produced a document for upgrade from 2.2.1b to 2.2.6e?

Thanks,

Jayatu

[Hieu Cao]

Hi Jayatu,

I've completed the firmware upgrade to 2.2(6e) successfully a couple of weeks ago.

The "autoinstall" of the Infrastructure went smoothly, but the autoinstall for the server blades did not complete successfully for a few blades, so the firmware for those blades were upgrade manually.

In term of non-disruptive, if your fabrics and SAN were setup properly, it would failover immediately to the secondary fabric when the first fabric reboots. 

For the server blades, I had the maintenance policy set "ack", so that I could vMotion the virtual machines off to other ESXi hosts before clicking "Ack" and reboot the blade.

Since you've experience upgrading the firmware before, it's not going to be much different from you've done in the past.

Good luck,

Hieu