Windows 2012, UCSM 2.1.2a, PCI discovery, vnic/vhba placement

[Walter Dey]

customer has a UCSM 2.1.2a, B200-M3, one VIC-1240, creates a SP template with vnic0,1,2,3 (fabric A,B,A,B); automatic vnic/vhba placement; then creates multiple SP's and installs W2012 (not R2) on the local disk and claims that he sees different PCI placements on different blades, e.g.

Ethernet 4 vnic3 B

Ethernet 3 vnic1 B          

Ethernet 2 vnic2 A

Ethernet 1 vnic0 A

Ethernet 4 vnic0 A

Ethernet 3 vnic2 A         

Ethernet 2 vnic3 B

Ethernet 1 vnic1 B

[Walter Dey]

Just FYI

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/05/11/dell-developed-and-dell-deployed-consistent-network-port-naming-on-microsoft-174-windows-server-174-2012-beta.aspx

Dell BIOS engineers identified a mechanism for making device names deterministic under an operating system and brought forward a change request to the PCI SIG , who develop and enhance the PCI standard.  Additionally, Microsoft engineers added the ability in Windows Server 2012 to read this information from the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) codes in compliant BIOSes. 

As a result, NIC names are now consistent and deterministic in Windows Server 2012 Beta running on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers - your ports will be named the same every time you restart the server.

Does UCS support such a capability ?

[Walter Dey]

http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2012/04/windows-server-2012-cdn-consistent-device-naming/

[Walter Dey]

[Tom MacDonald]

This is also related to teh following bug:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ef08deb9-d4d4-4977-85a4-764a0e65f80f/consistent-device-naming-cdn-of-physical-network-adapters

Only workaround is to  basically install windows and then right click on each of the vnics and  rename them in the right order. I know its not a pretty workaround but  that's only thing we got from Microsoft.

CSCue10994    Add Consistent Device Naming to BIOS and UCSM

This feature is being requested for both C and B Series: and would most likely be available in ucs release 2.2.

[Walter Dey]

Good news, thanks ! I checked the 2.2.1b documentation, and can't find anything ! have no access to CSCue10994  (Cisco internal)

[Tom MacDonald]

This is now fixed in 2.2(4b) with R2..... Among other enhancements.....

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/release/notes/ucs_2_2_rn.html