Rename UCS Service Profiles on HyperFlex cluster

[riaan.vanniekerk]

Our organisation standard is to align the UCS Service Profile name with the VMware ESXi hostname. This gives us various advantages insofar as we can do consistency check, the CI in our CMDB and monitoring aligns.

The only place I cannot do this, is HyperFlex, where the SP has a generic name like

• rack-unit-1
• rack-unit-2

I have put in queries via the various Cisco channels at our disposal, and all of them say don't do it, since it is not supported.

I cannot see why renaming the service profile would be an issue. Once the HyperFlex installer has deployed the service profile/HX Node on the server, it does not need to reference the SP by name again. Any changes like firmware upgrade happen against the SP template, which then pushes the change in host firmware package down to the SPs, regardless of their name.

Is there anything I am missing? Does anyone have any experience with renaming HX SPs and causing issues with upgrades, expansions or other operational tasks? 

[RedNectar · Accepted solution]

Hi @riaan.vanniekerk ,

Let me add my vote to the response you've received from Cisco.

DON'T DO IT

The moment you make your system different to the standard that 99.999% of users use, you are going to confuse:

1. Anyone who comes after you to manage the system
2. Any TAC engineer that needs to assist you in the future
3. A combination of the above two...

Further, if you ever expand the cluster, the same template will be used to create the next Service Profile, which will use the same service profile naming prefix (rack-unit-)

But having said all that...

I can't imagine the wheels falling off if you go ahead and rename them.