Jose, Let's just start with question 1. The 1000v is difficult to set up and configure the first few times around, so it's best to break this up into smaller questions. 1)After installing ESXi,what is to be done on VMs network part? I think you're asking what the first step is to install the 1000v. The 1000v has two components: the VSM and the VEM. The VSM is a virtual machine that either lives in your vSphere cluster or on a Cisco 1010/1110 appliance. You'll want to make sure that the version of the 1000v you're planning on installing is compatible with the version of vSphere on your hosts. Once you've got the right version, you'll run the install, which will prompt you for information on your vCenter Server. Once the installer is complete, you'll need to register the 1000v as a plug-in to vCenter. This will allow you to see the 1000v as a dvSwitch in the Inventory view within vSphere (which is also where you will eventually add your hosts to the dvSwitch). The VEM is a software module that will be installed on each of the ESXi hosts that will participate in the 1000v. You can deploy the VEM either via VUM or using the esxcli. You'll want to read through this document to see the specifics of the installation. I'm keeping this explanation high-level for brevity's sake. Once you get through step 1, post a reply to tell us how far you were able to get, and we'll help you through the rest. mike ... View more

Ok, well, not sure what that was about, but I finally decided to force the update of the Backup versions for these IOMs to 2.0(5a), and after about 10 minutes, all was well. Go figure. mike ... View more

When it boots, does it boot into the ESXi loader? I would expect that behaviour if you were booting into the ISO. Just to be clear, are you doing PXE booting, or just boot from SAN? mike ... View more

You don't need to have a 1:1 ratio for physical CPUs and vCPUs. You should, if possible, keep your vCPUs close to the number of logical CPUs present in your host. If not, ESXi will let you overcommit vCPUs on your host if you need to. Hope this helps. mike ... View more

The second adapter will be 1/1/2. (See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/cli/command/reference/1.0.2/command_reference_1.0.2_chapter4.html#wp2091890055 ) for additional information on the connect-adapter command). The Option ROM will handle the iSCSI booting; not OS drivers, since this is all pre-OS activity. Are you seeing a message during POST that says the Option ROM was loaded successfully? mike ... View more

The iscsi_get_config will tell you if the iSCSI initiator is able to connect to the target. If you run this command and don't see an active connection to the target, doublecheck your iSCSI target settings in the service profile. One field in particular: Name. Make sure you entered the IQN, not the hostname, for your target. I've always thought that field should be labeled differently. If you can run the iscsi_get_status and paste the results here, we should be able to find the problem. mike ... View more

AFAIK, this is a feature that has been missing from the dvSwitch for a while now. vSS doesn't suffer from this problem. Some people end up writing a script to correct the settings per dvportgroup, but that's only fixes the symptom, not the underlying problem. mike ... View more

One thing you can do it to use the command line to connect to the server's adaptor and collect iSCSI status information. UCSHOSTNAME#connect adapter 1/1/1 UCSHOSTANME#(adapter)connect UCSHOSTNAME(adapter)#attach-mcp adapter 1/1/1 (mcp):20# iscsi_get_config (To read more about iSCSI boot troubleshooting, check out this blogpost: http://www.ccierants.com/2012/03/boot-from-san-iscsi-with-cisco-ucs-20.html ). Is your native VLAN set to the VLAN that contains the iSCSI target? mike ... View more

Ok. Sorted it out. I had to re-acknowledge both blades and let the discovery process complete. This is mentioned in the 2.1 release notes for C-series hardware, but not B-series. Anyone else out that that runs into this problem might want to give this a shot. mike ... View more