UCSM managed C-series server to standalone

[ilmarnahkur]

Hello,

have a question about moving C-series server from USCM managed to standalone.

Is it possible to do without any data loss? As it is production environment testing is not an option.

What kind of steps are needed if it's possible.

Thank you 

[RedNectar]

Hi @ilmarnahkur ,

Hopefully a more knowledgeable person (@Kirk J ?) will give a more definitive answer, but it could be fairly straight forward, or it COULD be a bit of a nightmare.

The Nightmare

IF your UCS C series server has HBAs and connects to FC via the FI, then just forget about my answer - it will require more work than I can spruik off the top of my head.

There may be other variations of this nightmare that I haven't thought of. It is, after all 19:45 on a FRIDAY Aussie evening

The Good News

If the server is pretty stock standard, you should be able to power it down, disconnect it from UCS, reconnect the networking cables to a new switch with the same VLAN configuration as the FIs, then connect a keyboard/monitor, power it on, Press F2 (I think) at the appropriate moment to re-configure the BIOS to use CIMC DEDICATED management rather than UCSM management. [Diagram may be a bit old: Stolen from and earlier post]

[Wes Austin]

It depends what your definition of data loss is. You will lose all the configuration from UCSM like vNIC and vHBA configuration and will need to recreate this from the standalone CIMC point of view. You will also likely need to recreate any RAID volumes that were configured via UCSM. The data itself on the disks should remain intact as long as you did not conduct any scrub or format the drives. As always, you should create a backup of any data on the local disks you wish you remain intact.

You should be able to just recreate the RAID using the same disks and choose not to do an initialization when RAID is recreated from standalone CIMC.