Redhat 6.4 network connectivity setup

[dignarn]

Please excuse my lack of knowledge in this area as this is all new to us (UCS, SAN and Linux).

We have a UCS chassis with B200 series blades and are booting off ISCSI disks on a HP 43000 storage nodes.

With help from the CISCO rep, we setup the UCSM server profiles and ISCSI boot parms, etc and installed Redhat 6.4 - basic setup.  I'm now trying to configure the server for network access and here is where I'm stuck and I'm wondering if a step was missed in our setup.

On the UCSM side, the fabric swicthes are assigned IPs xxx.xxx.34.71 and 34.72 with a VIP resolving to 34.70.  Both Fabrics A & B are connected to our network switches  and are also directly connected to our isolated SAN switches.

We created a MAC pool and an IP POOL (xxx.xxx.34.73 to 80) and created two VLANS VLAN20 and 21. 

In the service profiles I see:

- two ISCSI vNIC, one for each fabric switch

     VLAN21(native) being for Fabric sw A&B  (xx.xx.0.21 & xx.xx.0.41) routes to ISCSI Storage nodes for boot. No adapter policy is set.

- 4 vNICs  FabA and B-Dev, FabA and B-ISCSI. There is no Dynamic vNIC Connection  or LAN Connectivity policies setup

The FabX-Dev are assigned to VLAN20 and the FabX-ISCSI are assigned to VLAN21

In USCM LAN tab I see the blades are assigned an IP from the IP POOL (eg. xx.xx.34.73)

Having this setup, I now install the OS and once complete I see eth0, ane ibft is already configured

however when I run system-config-network , I see eth0, 2 and 3 are labled Cicso VIC Ethernet NIC and eth1 is just Ethernet.

Both eth2 and 3 are configured for dhcp whereas eth0 is not.

At this point I can reboot and launch a KVM session from USCM. I can also ping the IP assigned to the blade but get permission denied trying to ssh into it as root.

I tried configuring eth1 to xxx.xxx.43.60  but get a device is not present when doing a ipup eth1. I also tried to configure eth3 with the same IP but that too did not work.

What am I missing???

Norm

[padramas]

Hello Norm,

Welcome to UCS.

The IP address pool is used for providing IP address to CIMC ( onboard management controller ) interface.It does not act as DHCP server pool where OS can obtain the IP addresses from.

With regards to NIC configuration, can you please provide output of following command ( SSH into Fabric Interconnect )

show service-profile circuit server x/y     ===> where X = Chassis number and Y is Blade slot number

Dynamic vNICs are required if you are implementing VM-FEX with Redhat KVM.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/vm_fex/kvm/gui/config_guide/2.1/b_GUI_KVM_VM-FEX_UCSM_Configuration_Guide_2_1.html

If not, we can just create regular vNICs that are required by host OS.Make sure necessary VLANs are allowed in the vNIC.

UCSM config guide

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/gui/config/guide/2.1/b_UCSM_GUI_Configuration_Guide_2_1_chapter_0100001.html

Padma

[dignarn]

Server: 1/1

Fabric ID: A

VIF vNIC  Link       State  OperState  ProtState  ProtRole  AdminPin  OperPin Transport

767 vNIC_FabA-ISCSI  Up     Active     No Protection Unprotected 0/0   1/17       Ether

769 vNIC_FabA-DEV    UP     Active     No Protection Unprotected 0/0   1/31       Ether

Fabric ID: B

768 vNIC_FabB-ISCSI  Up     Active     No Protection Unprotected 0/0   1/17       Ether

752 vNIC_FabB_DEV   Up     Active     No Protection Unprotected 0/0   1/31       Ether

We are not doing any virtualization and booting from  boot.  I also when through the config guide setup and I think there’s some missing steps in creating service profiles. In following the guide for ISCSI boot in the network  setup section

In step 1 - If you opt for the ISCSI boot, you go to step 4, where  in Expert mode you define ISCSI vNICS.  

Nowhere does it state to also create vNICs for server use to the LAN. You also cannot associate the ISCSI vNIC to a VLAN  due to missing steps.

After following the guide to completion of creating service profiles I get the following

When the CISCO rep was here to help in the initial setup he setup 4 vNICs – 2 for ISCSI and 2 for network connectivity. 

On the OS side (RH 6.4) - do you setup networking the same as a non-bladed system, create vlans...? 

I’m still in a delima……

[padramas · Accepted solution]

Hello,

If you are planning dedicate a NIC for iSCSI traffic ( say VIF 767 ) , you should be allowing necessary VLANs under Service Profile > vNICS > Modify VLANs section.

Similary, you need to allow necessary VLANs in other vNICs.

From OS perspective, you configure IP address and associate it to respective network interfaces.

Padma