UCS Upgrade 2.2(8L) Assistance

[PhilipLeighton20629]

Newbie post but I'm getting conflicting advice and would appreciate some thoughts.

We have a UCS environment currently running 2.2(8L) and wish to upgrade to 3.X or 4.X to allow us to purchase and add some M5 blades in preparation for a vSphere upgrade (to 6.5U3 or above from 6.0U3 ). 

Our issue is that we have a number (40) of  B230M2 (yes I know..) blades with VIC1280 cards.  In addition some some of these servers have MK81KR cards (for shame...).

Reading the online documentation here: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/release/notes/CiscoUCSManager-RN-4-0.html#reference_icc_1tg_h2b it states "Cisco UCS Manager Release 4.0 does not support UCS B-Series M2 generation blade servers"

I'd come to the conclusion that these blades aren't supported for use *at all* with v4.x and using the Hardware & Software Compatibility guide the supported version of firmware for use with ESXi 6.5U3 is stated as 3.2(3) with VIC 1280 cards only.  This would get us to a supported point quite quickly for our upgrade and provide us a route to implementation and migration to ESXi 6.5U3 with newly purchased servers.  

We had started on a path of planning that upgrade however a colleague had a call with a Cisco expert today who stated that as long as we didn't upgrade the firmware on the B230M2 blades to anything higher that 2.2(8L) then the blades would still be fine for management with a 4.X UCS and that we wouldn't have to upgrade the MK81 cards either.  He also stated that we wouldn't be able to avail of the latest processors in the M5 servers we wish to buy if we didn't go to 4.X.

Is this an option (managing B230M2 blades with v4.X)?  I'm dubious as it flies in the face of all online documentation.  

(If it is possible it would allow us to upgrade those servers to 6.5U2 which is the last ESX update supported by the 2.2(8L) firmware and allow us avail of the new generation of processors for the M5 blades we wish to purchase)

Any thoughts?

[Wes Austin · Accepted solution]

If you had a B200-M3 or M4 you could get away with this. Since the M2 blades are specifically called out as deprecated in the release notes they should not be recognized in UCSM 4.0. M81KR are actually deprecated in 3.X so they would not be recognized by 4.0 UCSM either.

Does this Cisco expert work for Cisco TAC? If so and you have a TAC case number, can you private message me so we can educate accordingly? This is likely what they were referring to, but the deprecated hardware trumps cross-version firmware support.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/release/notes/CiscoUCSManager-RN-4-0.html#concept_rlp_4h2_zdb

[PhilipLeighton20629]

Thank you for the *extremely* speedy reply! I'll find out more tomorrow on the guy my colleague was speaking to and get back to you.

Thanks very much again!