"Boot from SAN" step by step with Windows 2012 R2 and Cisco UCS using Brocade and EMC VNX.

"Boot from SAN" step by step with Windows 2012 R2 and Cisco UCS using Brocade and EMC VNX.

UCS:

• Create service profile for windows server.
• Create “Boot from san” boot policy
• Setup SAN primary and secondary target.
• The WWN required are that of your VNX array ports.

Brocade:

• Login to create an initial zone for one of the ports.
• Create new Alias
• Type in the Alias name and select the WWN from blade
• Create zone
• Select the blade Alias and VNX Storage processor
• Add to Zone configurations
• Activate

Cisco UCS - step by step configuration

As mentioned I don't go into too much details on my post since i think there are a lot of other great blogs and vendor documentation out there.  Here is my short bullet point task list.   If I am missing anything please let me know.

Set equipment policies:

• Equipment tab -> equipment - > policies tab
• Chassis/fex discovery policy
• Action = 4 ports
• Link grouping preference = port channel
• Power policy = grid

Configure server/uplink port:

• Equipment tab -> select FI-A/B -> expand -> fixed modules
• Configure the appropriate unconfigured ports as “Server” (connections between IOM and Fabric Interconnect) and “Uplink” (connection to network)

Configure FC storage ports

• Equipment tab
• All the way bottom, select FI A
• Right hand side select Configure unified ports
• Run slider to end of fiber storage ports you need
• This will reboot FIA, after reboot re-login.
• Select FI B
• Perform same steps

Cisco UCS - configure policies

Set Policies:

Network control policies (enable CDP)

• LAB tab -> Policies -> root -> sub-organizations -> network control policies
• Create network control policy
• Enable CDP

Bios Policy:

• Servers tab -> Policies -> root -> sub-organizations -> Bios Policies
• Create bios policies
• Mostly setting cpu settings

Host Firmware:

• Servers tab -> Policies -> root -> sub-organizations -> Host Firmware Packages
• Create host firmware package
• Set simple and only blade package version.

vCloud director - running MAC OS X and Windows VM in same vApp.

Recently we installed in Mac Pro 6,1 hardware and provided MAC OS X virtual machines to our vCloud director environment.

This was configured in a separate cluster in vCenter server which provides all the regular capabilities like HA, DRS and vMotion which is great. Also created a separate storage cluster and assigned a new MAC storage profile to this cluster which was made available within vCD.

MAC OS X templates was created and added to catalog with storage set to pre-provision on default storage profile create for MAC cluster.

Problem: 

In vCloud director a new Provider VDC was created and linked to the new vCenter server cluster.
Within the existing Organizations we created an additional virtual datacenter with MAC provider VDC selected.  This created new resource pool in the cluster.


The users where now able to deploy MAC OS templates to this VDC, however a request came back quickly that users need to deploy both MAC OS X and Windows VM within the same vApp.

Troubleshooting: 

The configuration as explained above obviously does not allow for this situation since during deployment of vApp you can only select a single VDC to deploy too as well for adding a VM you can only specify a single storage Policy, which will also be the one assigned to vApp's VDC .  So all the VMs would need to run on the Apple hardware cluster which is not idea.

Solution:

Solution was pretty simple and can be accomplished by merging your provider VDC's which was introduced in vCloud director 5.1.1.

1. Login to vCloud director as system admin.
2. Select Manage & Monitor
3. Under Cloud resources select Provider VDCs
4. Right click the MAC provider VDC and select Merge
5. Select the Provider VDC that you want this merge with.
6. After completion you will now see your Provider VDC has  additional resource pool, datastores and ORG VDCs
7. I then went ahead and deleted the VDC I initially created for the MAC deployments since only need the original VDC.

Now when you deploy a vApp select the existing VDC which contains the MAC Provider VDC and storage profile.  Same can be accomplish for deploying VM within a vApp.

Mac Pro 6,1 rack environment running VMware ESXi 5.5 (with Fiber connectivity to VNX)

With the recently addition of Mac Pro 6,1 to VMware's hardware compatibility I was eager to replace our exiting old Power Mac G5 towers in our environment.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=server&productid=37841&vcl=true

Prerequisites:

1. Mac Pro bios version MP61.88Z.0116.B05.1402141115

If your Mac Pro has an older boot ROM then just upgrade the Mac Pro to Yosemite (OS X 10.10) which contains the update to be applied to the Mac Pro.

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=915041082&mt=12&ls=1

1. vSphere 5.5 P03 is required

Currently the latest version of ESXi available on VMware download is only 5.5 update 2 so you have to include the required patch version onto the update 2 ISO.  To do this perform the following steps:

Cisco UCS error: will_boot_fault sensor failure asserted

After replacing a faulty UCS blade the following error presented itself after inserting the new blade into chassis:  will_boot_fault sensor failure asserted

Troubleshooting:

Ran the following -

Tried to run the board controller activation

# scope server <chassis/server>

# scope boardcontroller

# show version

Showed version 13 (2.2.3d)

# show image

Did not display version 13 but latest was version 8 (2.2.1d)

# activate firmware <boardcontroller version>.0 force

# commit-buffer

Received an error message that commit cannot proceed.

Dell DRAC and Internet Explorer 11

I don't think i have ever had more problems that i have had with my IE browser and Dell DRAC interface :)

Seems that there is always something broken and can either never get logged in, or show me the turning circle of death or just a blank white screen.

I am still a big IE browser user, yes yes I know, mainly due to compatibility but I think it is getting worse with newer versions and the whole implementation of their compatibility view is just crazy. 

Already downgraded from IE 11 back to IE 10, hence why i am writing this email since for the life of me I could not get the DELL DRACs to work. Alas I am back on IE 11 and have this working..