Creating a larger than 3GB HV partion on HV Virtual drive C220 3ML

[pew000007]

I have a C220 system that has a 16 GB SD card with the four partitions installed/configured, HV,SCU, Drivers and HUU, I would like to install Xenserver on the HV partition but due to the 16GB required to install this is not possible. 

I would like to know if I am able to do the following:

• Format the SD card and place it in the server, if I activate the HV partition in BIOS can I assume that the card being blank it will allow me to use all of the 16GB to install or will it not see the card until I have setup the various partitions using the SCU?
• If that is the case if get a larger card say 32GB and have to add the HV partition in with the SCU along with the other four partitions is there a way to allocating (more) the free space not allocated to the HV partition.

Thanks.

[Manuel Velasco]

Hi

There is not need to format the SD card to get the 16GB partition.  After the 1.5(4) firmware release the system does not longer have four partitions as before.  If you upgrade your firmware to the 1.5(4) release or later only a single partition is configured on the SD card (see release notes below)

Overview of the Pre-Installed Cisco Flexible Flash Card

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/release/notes/OL-31202-01.html#pgfId-541690

Now if you decide to go with the 32 GB SD card I recommend that you Cisco supported SD cards to avoid any problems with support the SD card PID is UCS-SD-32G-S (see c220 m3 spec sheet below, page 44)

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/C220M3_SFF_SpecSheet.pdf

Please let me know if this is useful and don't forget to rate any useful answers.

[pew000007]

Thanks for the reply, I have tested with a blank SD card and as hoped it automatically made an HV partition which I was succefully able to install Xenserver on and boot.

I have run the latest HUU and udated the firmware but I still have 4 partitoins, I am not able to format the card and it states in the Cisco documentation that the card cannot be formated is that because these partitions are protected on the media.

Can I please ask for some clarification on what I need to update the Frimware on the flashcard. If I can get just a sinlge HV partition on the Cisco card then I can use a supported media. 

Thank you for your help.

[Manuel Velasco · Accepted solution]

If you upgraded your server to at least 1.5(4) the only other thing you need to do is to reset the flex flash patitions to default (see attached screenshot), once you do that you will only see 1 partition.

Let me know if this helps

[pew000007]

Great thanks for the clarification ;) it worked like a charm....!