Upgrade ESXi 4 to ESXi 5 with B200 M2 M72KR-Q in UCS2.0

[jim.lin]

Hi, I performed the upgrade from UCS 1.4 to UCS 2.0 successfully. Then I tried to upgrade all blade servers from ESX4i to ESX5i. Here is the list of results.

1. B200 M2 with M71KR-E -> success.

2. B200 M2 with M81KR -> success.

3. B200 M2 with M72KR-Q - failed

Note: All firmware and bios were activated to 2.0 level.

The B200 M2 wth M72KR-Q was running ESXi4 in UCS2.0 fine before upgrade.

My first attempt was to upgrade from ESXi4 to ESXi5. The error message shown that ESXi5 detect no NICs. The blade server automatically reboot and reverted back to ESXi4.

The second attempt was to directly install ESXi5. The same error message and the system was limited to the only choice of cancel the installation and reboot.

The third attempt was to use vCenter 5.0 VUM to remotely upgrade the server from ESXi4 to ESXi5. Same error message and the system was rendered to rebooting cycles.

Has any of you seen this? Thanks.

Jim

[hfs_cisco]

Chin-heng,

Did you check the HCL for VMware ESXi 5 with that card? I had an issue with that card a few months ago and only classic ESX was supported with the card after loading the drivers for that card from VMware during installation.

[jim.lin]

The vCenter VUM method did all the updates for the ESXi4 (I used Cisco Custom ESXi4 image to install) before upgrade. It should catch that if not then Cisco needs to provide workaround or ESXi5 Custom CD for this.

[jim.lin]

So far I had no success installing or upgrading to ESXi 5 in this configuration. My only thought is to inject the M72KR-Q driver into the ESXi 5 installation CD image. Any of you know how to do this? Thanks.

[Robert Elmes]

We've just hit the same problem.  However looks like there is a driver available on the VMware site:

qla2xxx  version  911.k1.1-9vmw

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=14934&deviceCategory=io&partner=146&releases=76&deviceTypes=10&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

[Robert Elmes]

One of our VM guys (Cheers Bob!) have discovered that the vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.0 Driver Rollup 1 iso contains an install build of ESXi 5.0 that contains the required drivers.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/rollupiso_50_1/dHRAYnRoJSpiZHAldA==#products

Using this it was a straight foward install.