Cisco UCS Platform Emulator 3.1(2bPE1)

[dsoper]

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, Release 3.1(2bPE1)

Note that an updated patch release is now available: Cisco UCS Platform Emulator 3.1(2ePE1)

New Features and Significant Changes in Cisco UCS PE, Release 3.1(2bPE1)

• Full scale emulation of UCS Manager 3.1(2b) which features HTML 5 User Interface improvements
  • NOTE: Browser focus follows UCSM when HTML5 UI is launched.  HTML5 UI can be opened in a New Tab/Window if there is a need to continue viewing the PE Configuration page.
• Software and configuration features include the following:
  • Disk Zoning, Chassis Profiles, and Storage Profiles for C3260 systems
    • UCS Platform Emulator 3.1(2b) Storage Server Demo
  • Server and Chassis equipment templates for easy addition of emulated resources
  • Numerous emulator stability fixes including fixes for HW discovery across VM reboots

New Hardware Features

See the User Guide for additional details on supported Hardware.  Here is a summary of newly supported Hardware:

• Cisco UCS C3260 chassis, servers, and storage controllers
• M4 B-Series and C-Series servers including HX220C and HX240C
• NVMe-based PCIe storage options

Known Limitations

• Imported configurations should be manually checked to ensure there are no missing or unsupported components.  If issues are experienced following an import, any unsupported components can be manually deleted and missing components manually added through the Equipment menu on the Navigation pane.
• Firmware Management and Firmware Auto Install have not been validated in this release.

Backup/Import of UCSM Configuration

• The Platform Emulator does not save UCSM configuration state across Emulator resets (to avoid consistency issues in UCSM configuration and the emulator HW configuration).  To preserve UCSM state, UCSM backup and import operations can be performed.  See an example backup/import flow here: PythonSDK for backup/restore (import) of UCSM config

Firmware Management Note: UCS PE supports uploading B-Series and C-Series server firmware bundles.  Because of the large file sizes of the firmware bundles, UCS PE only supports uploading of stripped-down versions (link below).  Stripped-down versions include only the firmware metadata (not the actual firmware binaries).

• Download UCSPE Firmware Bundles:  UCS Platform Emulator Firmware Bundles (includes firmware meta-data only)

Download Note: If you have issues downloading the attached OVA or Zip file, please try the cisco.box.com links in the attached Box_Download_Links_3_1_2bPE1.txt.zip file.

MD5 hashes for downloads:

• OVA: ecc659a8f70b22c4334be46272c6955b
• ZIP: 5d44765c7bd04e1d96e9a85436a780b1
  

[dsoper]

What version of UCS is the live system and what are the HTTP and HTTPS settings on the live system (Admin->Communication Management->Communication Services)?

[bkleiman72]

The Live System is 2.26e and the Communication Management is setup for both HTTPS and HTTP redirect.

[ROVAN-D ALMEDIA]

awesome

[jim_nickel]

Is it possible to use UCS director with this UCS Platform Emulator?

I would like to build a test environment to learn UCS Director and I am using vSphere.

Thanks,

JIm

[Athonia Cappelli]

HI All, I've installed this OVA onto ESXi 6.5 and there were no errors during the process. I notice two issues.

1. You'll see in the video below that when I enter the CLI there's an error about '/ape/ape/opt/env/ape.env' not existing as reported by /apebox/menu.sh (line 67 of the script)
2. Next, the web server doesn't launch. SSH server is working and I was able to log in there. There's nothing running on port 80, 443 nor any other ports besides 22 (I scanned up to 10000).  Any ideas?

Thank you!!

Video Link : 16082

[dsoper]

I’m not sure what would cause those issues. Can you try a reinstall with the new release available here: https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-71877. That page has MD5 sums for the downloads to verify no corruption on the downloaded image.

Thanks.

[dsoper]

UCSD can be used with the Platform Emulator, although UCSPE cannot perform any OS boot or provisioning flows. Service Profile related workflows here: https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-56419 should work with UCSPE.

Thanks.

[akbarshaheryar]

Video Link : 16208

Guys Im stuck at this point please advise

[hemantpr0]

Hi David

I am quite new to this and would like to understand if this emulator is an alternate of UCSM for an individual? And if yes then can we configure new blade server using emulator?

[dsoper]

UCSPE provides an emulator of UCS HW that the UCSM provided with UCSPE manages.  Emulated servers (B, C, and S-Series) can be managed.

[dsoper]

The status menu ('a') will show the network settings.  If an IP has been assigned to all interfaces (3 total IPs for VIP, FI A, and FI B), you can ping with VIP to verify connectivity.  If pings work, you can point a browser at the VIP and interact with the emulator.

[Andrew_Newton]

Hi, Struggling to use as it runs so extremtly slowly. Tried importign the OVA into VM workstation, that was almost unresponvise, so on the off chance it was corrupt I tried the zip but still getting the same problem.  Increased the memory to 2GB and tried all the main browsers (IE, Chrome, Firefox) and get the same results with all.  If I do get into teh browser and click on equipment it takes ages to load and if you make a change it just doesnt respond ever ... but doesnt appear to be locked.   Does anyone have any ideas  as its virtually un-uasable.

Thanks

[dsoper]

Hi Andrew,

What OS version and VM environment are you using? Also, is it possible for you to try the environment deployed in the Cisco demo cloud: https://dcloud-cms.cisco.com/demo/cisco-ucs-automation-programmability-v1

That demo environment deploys numerous PEs and performance should be reasonable. If that works better for you, we can see what other issues might be causing the performance you are seeing.

Thanks

[Andrew_Newton]

Hi David

Thank you for contacting me , I have just this minute resolved the issue by updating the JRE version and now it’s quite responsive after a reboot.

However I have spotted a few other issues such as when creating a disk zoning policy for a chassis base server , using Firefox or chrome doesn’t allow you to select the servers/controllers, but if I use IE it works fine.

But I think my biggest problem now is the number of memory faults that are displayed on different equipment , some of which I can remove but other I cannot. Given I want to use to demo to a customer I don’t think that will look good.

Andy

Regards

Andrew Newton

Solutions Architect

Logicalis UK Ltd

M: +44 (0) 7967 402099

[dsoper]

We have an updated release, Cisco UCS Platform Emulator 3.1(2ePE1), that eliminates several errors (should have no critical or major alerts on startup with the default config).