Any UCS drives available for 9240-8i?

[George Sypsomos]

The UCS drives I have are firmware A005 since we keep them updated with HUU as recommended. The UCS-C22-M3 requires a 9240-8i for ESXi to be able to be installed. We are trying to find an actual use for it. The 9240-8i requires firmware A001 to be on my drives (Cisco part A03-D300GA2, which is Seagate ST300MM0006), according to the compatibility matrix.

Is there any way to downgrade the firmware to match (and fix the "unsupported" error in LSI WebBIOS), or does everyone just buy new drives?

[Kirk J]

You may want to check to confirm the LSI raid controller is running at least package version 20.13.1-0255.

This was available as of huu 3.01c for c22m3's

I could maybe see a scenario where your 9240 doesn't have the later firmware,,, and isn't sure what to do with the supported drive running a later firmware.

Do you get the Seagate drive firmware from the HUU update process?

Kirk...

[George Sypsomos]

Thanks, Kirk.

Yes I have that on the 9240, and I got the Seagate firmware updated to A005 from the HUU. I made the mistake of thinking that keeping firmware up to date would be the best first step. My other drives have A004 on them, but the LSI documentation states that A001 is the accepted firmware. It's too bad that the Cisco documentation states that the 9240 is required for ESXi on the C22-M3, but doesn't mention that you'll also need OLD hard drives to use the 9240.

George

[Kirk J]

Looking at the EOL statement for the C22M3, https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/eos-eol-notice-c51-733776.html 

it lists 

End of SW Maintenance Releases Date:  HW

The last date that Cisco Engineering may release any final software maintenance releases or bug fixes. After this date, Cisco Engineering will no longer develop, repair, maintain, or test the product software.

July 30, 2016

The only updates you would have seen for this server after 2016 are vulnerability/security updates.

Also noticed the 9240 raid controller is a linked component listed in the EOL statement at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/eos-eol-notice-c51-733777.html, so would not expect to see firmware released after 2016 for it either.

I checked LSI/Broadcom's site for the 9240 and the last firmware update specifically for the 9240 was in 2015.

As the HDs are not specific to just that server or raid controller, you can see additional firmware updates come out for those (i.e. via C220/240 HUUs ).

I can see how you might get into your scenario where the HD update is later than the raid controller, making the controller think the drive isn't a supported model.

The HUU doesn't do HDD firmware downgrades, but you may be able to try using the Webios (contrl+h) utility, or storcli utility to push the older drive firmware.  I don't have any docs on this process, as it's not the supported way for upgrading(downgrading) drive firmware.

Updating to the latest supported firmware is generally a recommend troubleshooting procedure.

However, I think you may have mixed and matched your firmware sources, which is where we ran into issues.  Which specific HUU did you get the drive firmware from?

Don't really see any good options that doesn't include newer hardware.

Sorry,

Kirk...

[Network Keith]

Hey George,

Did you ever get this to work?

It seems you are ahead of me with the same gear. I just ordered raid cards because of my findings about VMware and the onboard not being compatible. This has been a bit of a pain the last few days. I purchased gear hoping to learn my way around UCS. ( I have 2 fi's, 2 Nexus switches, and 2 c22 m3's) Getting vmware to run on these was the original goal, at this point anything will do. 

[George Sypsomos]

No, sir I did not get it working.

My C22-M3's are relegated to being used as regular servers with 64Gb RAM and software only RAID, so, much less efficient than a VM on a 5108, and MUCH less than a VM on my HP DL380's (due to the lack of need of 750watt FI's running UCS Manager). I also have 10 5108's at capacity that I'm trying to find a residual income use for, other than parting them out and selling them on eBay for a one-time gain. It is slow going, while at it alone because everyone else is busy with their 9-5's.

A proper solution would be Cisco allowing firmware downgrades for the drives made for these things, so they can be used as intended, but that would keep customers from having to purchase new gear. A little bit of forethought would show that if you allow more people to learn more about UCS by letting us build cheap physical training platforms, then it would grow even more in popularity, not to mention less impactful on the environment, and I'm not even the tree-hugger type.

R/S,

George

[Network Keith]

I am still trying to get mine going for VMware install. I just need the correct cables to go with the raid card. I spoke with someone from twitter who had some old c22 m3's around, he never tried to install VMware in the past but offered to try. He was able to get it working as of last night.  (Vmware Eval 6.5) (9220-8i) 

He originally ran into a corrupted bios issue, but after that, he was good to go. 

I will keep you posted if I get it going. 

[Network Keith]

Update, so I put an old usb drive in the server just to see if it would recognize it, just so happen that the drive had the install files for vmware 6.0, so I let the install run and I was able to reboot and it loaded up fine.  I re-enabled the software raid, removed the physical raid card, booted back to vmware and vmware can see the drives when I go to the storage option. 

I did see another post where it mentioned not using the internal drives for an os install, just storage.