CIMC Supervisor firmware upgrade times out on C220 M3 servers

[dmveron01]

Hello,

I manage about three dozen UCS C220 M3 and M4 servers for our company. I'm using an evaluation copy of Cisco's IMC Supervisor to see if it's worth purchasing for centrally managing firmware upgrades. Upgrades for our M4 servers are going well, but every attempt to upgrade the M3 servers are failing with one of these errors:
FAILED - Read timed out
FAILED - Update Complete CIMC InProgress,

I'm trying to update from 3.0(4d) to 3.0(4i). Opening the Java KVM from CIMC Supervisor, attaching the ISO as virtual media, and upgrading that way works without issue.

Any ideas on how to troubleshoot this issue?

Thanks.

[Wes Austin]

Were you able to open a TAC case on this issue so we could track the problem and potentially identify a bug and provide a fix?

[dmveron01]

We don't have the M3 hosts under support, so that's not an option for us.

[bhlib]

Had the same issues on c240 M3 servers, and nothing helped me from about. And I found another way to upgrade Cisco IMC.

I extracted binary FW file from ISO and manually updated through CIMC UI

[StarTrekkie17]

Do please share how you extracted this as there is not discrete firmware file for the CIMC anymore.  I would very much like to get this since the CIMC is crap and I would rather upgrade the CIMC in the web interface and then the bios and other stuff off hours.

[bhlib]

You need UNIX system. First mount FW image and copy GETFW folder from this image to local directory. Navigate to GETFW folder and chmod +x getfw. Then you need run command sudo ./getfw -c -s SRC_firmware_image -d DEST_ to_keep_Firmware (For additional information run ./getfw -h). You will receive a folder with the binary file with Cisco IMC firmware. Then you can update FW via web-ui.

[StarTrekkie17]

Yeah. never got that to work tried many many times.  My UCS is under TAC support so Cisco kindly provided the 3.0.4J for me.  I've opened another to get the 3.0.4M since same issue.

I'm not taking remote servers down to pull PSUs for 10 minutes and then wait 2 hours to load the ISO over 3 mbit MPLS.   Not then the CIMC IMG is a few mew can can be loading in CIMC gui while the server is running.

Cisco needs to be more like Dell Idrac TBH.

[Wes Austin]

Can you private message me the TAC case so we can take a look? We should not be pulling PSU for 10 mins for a CIMC upgrade to complete. Have you mounted the ISO locally on the same subnet as the server? It sounds like there may be some issue copying the firmware image over the network.

[adudek]

I have hit this too.

Running 3.0(3a) trying to go to 3.0(4n)

[Hard_Boiled_Greg]

This fixed this same firmware upgrade issue for me on a Cisco UCS C220-M3S that was running firmware bundle 3.0(1c) and was being upgrade to 3.0(4q). Thanks for posting this!

[robertosquitieri]

I've had the same problem with C-Series Server C220-M4 upgrading from 4.1(2)h to 4.1(2)k and the workaround from step 1 to 3 works fine.

NO needs to upgrade only the CIMC first, but all the component works fine togheter even the utility then upgrade only CIMC and BIOS. 

[ops@cira.ca]

I had similar problems as well, getting the error that the CIMC was out of memory etc.

This was on a C220M3 updating from 3.0.4i to 3.0.4p

My solution was the extract the cimc update using the getfw utility located in the ISO.

You do this on Linux and are required to have the squashfs module installed prior but once extracted you get a cimc.bin file.

Then from the CIMC GUI you manually update the CIMC from the browser, let it complete, reboot the CIMC and then if your HUU is still loaded, you then opt to update all the components with the exception of the CIMC (it'll still show as the older version)

It'll complete and reboot and then it should be clear.