UCS-E140S-M1/K9 ESXi Upgrade Path ?

[kenwa2004]

We have these USCe (UCS-E140S-M1/K9) modules installed in our 3945 ISR Routers.

They come shipped installed with a custom ESXi Image Profile, or you can download it from VMWARE.

ESXi-5.0.0-623860-custom-Cisco-2.0.1.6.iso

Will we be able to upgrade these UCSe modules to later versions of ESXi (5.1,5.5 etc.) ??

I've been searching around for newer custom images that are supported for these modules, but I'm unable to find anything.

I want to better understand the RoadMap for these modules, as we need to keep all of our ESXi hosts moving forward with updates.

These are the only ESXi hosts we have still stuck back on ESXi 5. 

[Brian Morrissey · Accepted solution]

Hi,

There is updated firmware for the e-series devices which allows for Vmware 5.5

E-series release notes

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/e/2-0/release/notes/2_0_release_notes.html

E-series config guide

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/e/2-0/sw/gui/config/guide/b_2_0_GUI_Config_Guide/b_2_0_GUI_Config_Guide_chapter_010.html#task_14D4360DEF3849CC8BCA24A1ED330854

E-series firmware downloads

http://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=284479227&softwareid=284480160&release=2.2.2&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

[kenwa2004]

Be wary of the firmware update. We used the HHU as advertised and it bricked the cimc. Status says "Service Module Has Failed" and it is in a reboot loop. 

TAC has not even tried to troubleshoot this, they are just sending a new one.....

[surama123]

Thanks for the warning! I am even having trouble finding the Host Upgrade Utility (HUU) which as you say is the recommended way of doing updates on the UCS-E. Cisco have published the firmware update as per the link above but all the documentation advises not to use it - instead we are advised to use the HUU which I can't find and according to your experience it is dodgy anyway!

We have CIMC 2.1 and have had inconsistent behaviour from the BIOS when trying to perform installation of new OS from various media including external CDROM, virtual CDROM and external USB. CIMC does not seem to control the boot order well so we have reverted to working with the BIOS directly which is just about tolerable after you disable the PXE boot option but it is hard documenting how to do this because the behaviour seems different every time we try it.

[kenwa2004]

For now we have just updated the CIMC to 2.2 through the browser utility within the CIMC.

We then loaded the ESXi-5.1.0-799733-custom.

We really like the idea of these at our spoke sites, but it would be great if they were easier to use, setup, and upgrade. There just does not seem to be a lot of "Real World" information out there on these sre servers.

We have some of these which are older running some 1.x version, so we need to figure out where to go with those next. 

[surama123]

That seems right on the mark. These are potentially a great idea but Cisco definitely need to polish the installation tools and bring together the documentation so it all makes sense together. It seems HUU has been pulled from the support site. In light of your comments I might go ahead and upgrade manually using the firmware update that is on there - but I had to hunt around for the release note as it wasn't together with the firmware on the support site. It mentions some of the bugs we were having but not all of them!

Why did my post end up near the top, duh, sorry!