Modify service profile template error on adding vNICs

[willsmith1701]

I'm running into problems trying to add vnics to a service profile template.

When I add vnics to the service profile template and then click apply, the UCS returns a configuration failure warning saying

"This will trigger a PCI-e reprovisioning of vNICs/vHBA devices.
As a result, PCIe addresses or Adapter Placement of vNICs/vHBAs will change across Host Reboots."

Cisco support says this is a known issue when adding vNICs using vNIC templates, and the workaround is to not use the vNIC template, but to manually configure the new vNIC with the same values as the vNIC template instead.

Now I'm concerned that yet another error will occur when trying this approach and am looking for a way to add the new vNICs to only one blade first to confirm that the vNICs are added successfully without causing any problems that would result in connectivity loss before making the same change to the rest of the blades.

What would be the best to way add vNICs to the blade servers that will not risk taking out connectivity from all of the blades at once, and yet preserve a consistent configuration across all of the blades? Remove one blade's service profile from the service profile template, then add the vnics directly to the individual blade's service profile, then, upon a reboot and confirmation of success on the indivdual blade, apply the change to the service profile template to add the vnics to the rest of the blades, and the add back the removed blade's service profile to the service profile template?  Is there a more straightforward way to do this?

The UCS manager version is 2.21(1d).  The blade model is B200M3.  The chassis model is 5108.

Please ask questions if you need more information to give a possible solution.

[Walter Dey]

Don't understand your point; I assume you have a updating template, and btw. a maintenance policy with ACK applied; therefore you are asked to ACK in case servers have to be rebooted.

Anyway, you could "unbind" a derived service profile from the template and do your tests without impacting the other blades.

[Keny Perez]

For the individual testing you want to perform that is the best path.

Another way is that you can create a new Service Profile based on that template (let's call it "test"), unbind "test" from the template once created, disassociate the service profile from the server you want to use for testing (be careful not to have a scrub policy set to yes or you may lose data/config upon the disassociation) and associate "test" to the server. 

Now, make the changes on "test" and check if you achieved the desired results; if yes, then go ahead and make the changes on the template, disassociate "test" from your blade and associate the original SP, now with the changes applied.

HTH,

-Kenny

[brett.sinclair1]

I have a similar issue. I'm attempting to add a vNIC to an existing server that already has 2 vNICs and 2 vHBAs. Whether it's bound to a template or not, or if I use a vNIC template or not, I'm warned "This will trigger PCIe re-provisioning of vNICs/vHBAs devices....."

Did you progress any further or get resolution ?  Any advice would be welcomed.

UCS Manager version is 2.25b.

Thanks.