upgrade UCS and windows operating system driver question

[fly]

we want to upgrade ucs to new version 4.x.x

Does I need upgrade windows server driver ,I found Cisco provide iso driver according to new Ucs version.

we have windows server 2012 

But I search Cisco ucs compatible matrix web site I found according to windows server 2012, latested version is only 3.2.x , not version 4.x.x we upgraded to.  

Is that mean we can only install .3.2.x driver on our windows server 2012 , and cooperate with ucs manager 4.x.x?

please see attatch

is that ok?

thank you 

tom

[riaan.vanniekerk]

(updated 2024-05-13: to fix the incorrect information, as indicated by Steven)

There are 2 aspects to this:

(1) Driver compatibility: The driver should be the one certified against the particular server firmware bundle.

In our experience over the past decade, newer drivers with older server firmware does not cause an issue. 

What you REALLY want to avoid is your scenario, running newer server firmware (e.g. 4.2) with drivers that have been certified with 3.2 firmware versions. 

(2) Backwards compatibility between infrastructure bundle and server firmware

You need to be at a minimum of 4.0(x) on the server bundle to be able to run any 4.x infrastructure bundle. If the latest drivers for 2012 is 3.2.x, you should downgrade the server and infrastructure firmware to the latest 3.2 firmware. You can run 3.2 server firmware on 4.1 & older infrastructure bundle (which includes UCSM) but not on 4.2 and newer infrastructure bundle.

If the OS version keeps you on server firmware 3.2, then the latest you can run is infrastructure bundle 4.1.

NB - the above is to strictly remain within what is considered supported by Cisco. If you are running Windows 2012 you are probably running on hardware that has reached end of life / last day of support already (e.g. M1-M4). If you can upgrade your server to a newer OS version (or replacing with newer hardware as prereq), that is first prize and will allow you to upgrade infrastructure and server firmware to newer versions. 

Violating (1) in our experience caused us great instability (we had ESXi hosts with older fnic drivers and newer server firmware, and every couple of hours, the SAN traffic on some of some of our SAN uplinks - the ones that had blades with newer firmware than what the fnic driver supports - would drop to 0, and the only way to get the traffic back was to reset the uplink. 

[fly]

fortunately，I check customer's envirment onsite this week. It is windows server 2012 R2, cisco provide 4.x driver to this version , I found many customer don't install cisco operating system driver which cisco provide, but it is ok.

I found upgrade ucs to new version is a tough task , many aspects to think because many customer haven't upgrade ucs for many years

thank 

[Steven Tardy]

UCS typically allows N-2 for Server firmware.
For UCS 4.2 that would be 4.1 and 4.2.
For UCS 4.2 that would be 4.1 and 3.2.

The Release Notes for Cisco UCS Manager, Release 4.1 Cross-Version Firmware Support details that server firmware 3.2(3x) IS allowed with UCSM 4.1.

Be careful to check the deprecated hardware sections of the release notes (including older 3.2 / 3.1 / 3.0 / etc) to see if any of your hardware isn't supported on the new UCSM versions due to being End-of-Life.

Without knowing which exact hardware (Server / VIC / IOM / FI) you have it is hard to provide exact options.

[fly]

yeah 

but custmer vesion is very low 2.2.8 

I think I only way to pray to God!

[riaan.vanniekerk]

Thanks for correcting me Steven. Having a longer "tail" of support is definitely useful. I did not think to check the other 4.x releases, only 4.2. (I think you made a typo since both lines start with "for 4.2", guessing the 2nd line should be 4.1. - feel free to fix yours and I will remove this)

@fly you mentioned your customer is still running 2.2(8). Is that on infra or compute? If it is not the hardware that is holding them back. based on this table I maintain on Reddit, you can check what the latest supported server firmware is for your specific case. According to this table, 4.0 is supported until 2025, 4.1 will still be supported until 2028.

I just created a new table summarising the UCS Cross-Version Compatibility, at https://www.reddit.com/r/CiscoUCS/comments/1cqu1g0/cisco_ucs_crossversion_firmware_support/ 

If you can upgrade to 4.1 infra you can run all the way back to 2.2(8) (even though that particular firmware version is no longer supported), which was a surprise to me.