Hi,

I'm facing some problems for OnBoard Administrator / Virtual Connect Manager configuration and I have not been able to address them. Let me explain: 

I have a C7000 enclosure configured that have been recently migrated from site A to site B, with different networking configurations. I have updated the networking for enclosure, device bays and innterconect bays in EBIPA and all data was properly typed, but the point is that when I try to access Virtual Connect Manager from the left side link, the URL points to old site's Virtual Connect Module@Bay1 URL. I tried to reconfigure interconnect bays again from EBIPA, but the URL did not update. Even accessing to direct new IP for VC Module 1, when the login screen for Virtual Connect Web Console was shown, the web browser redirects to old IP. ¿?¿?¿?

I thought it was a misconfiguration related to enclosure migraton so, I decided to clear vcm mode from HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator CLI and them, I've restarted both OAs and both Virtual Connect Modules. After that, the URL for Virtual Connect Manager link at the left side was updated to new IP configuration for VC Module 1 (Active)

However, when I tried to access Virtual Connect Manager Web Console in order to reconfigure the domain, the first time setup wizard throws the attached errors. This is something weird, because apparently everythings looks fine in EBIPA.

I decided to go further and I tried to shut down VC Module 1 in order to set VC Module 2 as active and only one member, but when I done it, the URL for the left side link did not update, and when I tried to access to VC Module 2 new IP, the web browser redirects to old Virtual Connect IP/URL again.

It seems that I have a couple of problems mixed up here and I don't know how to address them. Someone has faced this issues or similar? Any idea to fix this?

Thanks in advance. 

Hey gus,

I'm planning an upgrade from VC 3.51 and 4.01 to 4.45.

There are Flex-10 Enet and 8GB 20 Port FC modules in the enclosures.

I'm a little confused on the upgrade path. In the 4.45 release notes there's a table for the upgrade/downgrade path for the 8GB 20 port modules. it says:

From VC 3.30/3.51/ 3.60/3.70/3.75/ 4.01/4.10          To VC 1.31 to 3.18 and 4.20 to 4.45       Yes 

So does this mean I have to to upgrade to 4.20 first and then to 4.45 when I have the 8GB 20 port modules in the enclosures? I couldn't find any other documents stating you have to do intermediate upgrades, but can go directly from 3.X to 4.X. Is this intermediate upgrade special to the 8GB 20 port FC modules?

Thanks!

Hello,

i am facing an issue, after migration of FC SAN to new SAN switch, all paths from this VC are down. 

Previously  there was on SAN switch and two FC cables from C7000 VC-Flex (VC-A and VC-B)  were connected to single SAN switch. now we have installed new Brocade SAN switch and connected VC-A to new envrionment. we have also connected P2000 to this new san switch, All ports on VC, P2000 and SAN switch  are up and running, but the servers are unable to see the storage.

we are using VMware-vSphere 6.u2, i have re-scanned HBA, and also did reboot for one of the server but no-success. 

vSphere displays "Dead" for datastore, 

1. Can i reboot VC from CLI/GUI?
2. How do i know which VC paths are not working ? so it needs the reboot. 

thanks,

Greetings!

 We have  8 HP BL460c Gen9 blades in a C7000 chassis with

2 HP BLc VC FlexFabric-20/40 F8 VC  and 20GB  2port flexnics on each blade...

is it possible to uplink the chassis to 2 entirely different networks so  that 4 blades only go through one Flexfabric module and other 4 blades thru another Module...using server profiles ?

Appreciate any pointers/suggestions

Thank you  in advance!

Hi,

Anybody have any VCEMCLI scripts to accomplish changing enet connections for a list of profiles?

I have a major network change coming that I need to accomplish changing about 100 profiles. Using the straight command line is painful since it kicks off a job for each command string.

Thanks,

Ron

Recently started at a new place and given the task to review all the firmware on the Blade enclosures (2 of them). All up to date apart from virtual connect....

we have 2x HP VC Flex-10 Enet modules & 2 VC 8Gb 24-Port FC Modules per enclosure. 

The Flex-10 Enet modules are at version 3.10, and the 24-Port fibre channel are at version 1.03  (according to SUM 106.04.0 report (attached), oh and I have tried updated through SUM - but wont because it's locked out to VCEM).

So tried to logon to VC and update, but I can't logon because the VC  Manager is locked out to VCEM. We don't use VCEM, and nobody here remembers ever using it. The IP Address points to our current backup server - which doesn't have VCEM (or HP-SIM) installed. We don't currently have licenses for VCEM (and this place being tighter the buttocks of Scandinavian fruit fly, we are unlikely to get them!), do I even need a license to update the firmware ?

Anyway on advise from hpe  I have installed VCEM on our current HP-SIM server and I can now see the VC domains and have an option to update the firmware, but I can't because the VC domains are not part of a group. So I tried to create a group and them add the VC domains to it, but it can't create a group because the VC modules are not at a supported version.So I have logged a call with HP, and am going round in circles.

In the mean-time can any of you offer advice on what else I can try? Oh and I have no previous knowledge of VCEM, just to make things interesting !

Many Thanks in advance 

Pete

Guys, 

A confirmation needed - both VC and OA and running with 3.70 (with 460G7 Blades) ,and needs to be updated to 4.50. 

Couple of Questions - 

1.

Please confirm > As per compatibility table, VC running at 3.70 is compatible with OA running 4.50 - 

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=mmr_kc-0100204-12

2.  If we schedule upgrade of VC later, and just concentrate on OA upgrade, is this sequence of upgrade good  ? 

3.60 > 4.11 > 4.23 > 4.30 > 4.40 > 4.50

Hello, 

I am having a problem trying to get a couple of new blades connected to our SAN fabric.

I have a c7000 blade enclosure with 2 x HP VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Modules. The virtual connects have two flex10 (shared) uplinks and 2 x Fibre connections for the SAN fabric.

The Chasis has 10 working blades (BL460c's) already in that are connected to the fabric, 8 running VMware 5.5 and two running Server 2008 R2.

My problem is, when I add new blades (another BL460c Gen8 and a BL460c Gen9) they will not connect to the fabric.

I have copied the server profile for one of the working VMware blades and assigned it to a new bay. I then inserted and new blade and built the server using the Vmware 5.5 HP custome image , ran all the firmware updates on the blade. The Ethernet Network links are connecting as expected, the HBA's are present with the correct WWN's but they can't see any paths.

I arranged for the Network team to add the HBA ID's (WWN's) to the Nexus 5000's (acting as the SAN switch), I watched them add the configuration (where they copied and modified configuration for a working server) and entered the correct WWPN's. We have a TAC case with Cisco open and they have confirmed that the configuration is correct and should be connecting, but the Nexus is not seeing anything from the new blades.

On the Virtual connect the interconnect bays are showing "Logged In".

I forgot to mention. I moved the blades from Bays 5+6 to bay 13-14 after the firmware updates to try to eliminate the bays as the problem. This is why the logs below state Bay 5+6, but the screenshot above shows 13+14.

But on the Nexus 5000's they are not showing as active, the indicators are not showing up on the SAN for me to register and assign LUN's.

It looks like there is an issue either with Virtual Connect getting stuck and not forwarding requests to the Nexus or there is something missing on the Nexus configuration (that Cisco have missed) causing it not to connect to the fabric.

I have a ticket open with HP who asked me to upgrade the firmware on the OA and VC to 4.5. I upgraded to this and the problem is still the same.

Observations during pull tests and VC firmware updates ---- After the VC firmware updates I also physically removed the VC modules, one by one (as not to cause downtime), I noticed that when I pulled out VC module 2, all systems stayed up (even the Ethernet side of the two new blades). I did get some reduncancy warnings on the blades as expected. When I removed VC module 2 (after module 1 had come back up) all of the "working blades" stayed up (reporting redundancy warnings again) but the two new blades both stopped responding to Ping. When I reinserted the VC module 1 they started responding to Ping again.

I reported these findings and a new set of logs to the HP team on my case, whoe are looking through the new logs, but they are currently thinking "replace the virtual connect modules" and I am a bit worried this may not work, considering there are 10 other blades in the chasis all using those virtual connect modules without issue....

One error that HP did find in the logs before the firmware updates (that I can't find so it must be in the VC collects) was the following:

1. [VCM_OP_STATE_UNAVAILABLE] New Op State [VCM_OP_STATE_OK]
2. EnetModuleDownlinkPort::loadData: platform claims DCC is not enabled on port enc0:iobay2:d15 but model thinks otherwise.

2016-08-04T15:04:11.826+01:00 [Personality.c:4742] ERROR: CQHORD retrieval failed for server 5

EnetModuleDownlinkPort::loadData: platform claims DCC is not enabled on port enc0:iobay2:d15 but model thinks otherwise.
EnetModuleDownlinkPort::loadData: platform claims DCC is not enabled on port enc0:iobay2:d15 but model thinks otherwise.

I have had this case open with HP for months now, in various tickets and I am completely at a loss as to what is causing this. 

Any help with my situation would be greatly appriciated.

Kind Regards,

James

 EDIT: I have had a look at the Throughput Statistics and noticed that the HBA's don't appear to be sending anything:

Bay14 Config:

LOM1-1:b=>Bay 1:d14:v2

LOM1-2:b=>Bay 1:d14:v2

Stats for both:

Hello,

We have a C7000 environment populated with BL460c Gen7 blades.  Each blade has (in addition to the LOM) a HP NC522m mezzanine card.  The blades have been patched with the latest (at the time of this posting) BIOS, firmware, driver, and OS updates.

We also have 2 x VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Modules in interconnect bays 1 and 2, along with 2 x VC Flex-10 Enet Module in interconnect bays 5 and 6.  All Virtual Connect modules are running firmware version 4.50 and are configured for horizontal stacking only.

We have presented a total of 8 flex nics and 2 flex FCoE adapters to each blade.  The FCoE adapters show up fine, but only 7 of the 8 flex nics are visible.  Additionally, one of the flex NICs has an odd MAC address that doesn't show up in the server profile (we're using HP assigned MAC addresses and WWNs).

It's quite possible that I don't understand a key concept of the Virtual Connect architecture, but I can't figure out why not all of my NICs are showing up properly.  Is this a Windows Server 2012 R2 limitation or am I trying something with the number of NICs that isn't possible.

Thanks

Hi,

Scenario.

I have a mutiple C7000 stacked domain setup in VCEM. 3 Enclosures.

2 of the enclosures have 2 x HP VC Flex-10 Enet Module and 2 x VC FC 8GB modules. The third enclosure has HP 4Gb VC-FC Module, I have 2 x 8GB VC FC spare modules and need to upgrade the 4GB to 8Gb modules.

1. What is the process to get the VC FC 4GB replaced by the 8GB?

2. Is it as simple as remove and replace modules?

3. Will I loose WWN's?

4. Will I have to remove the domain group within VCEM, Unassign profiles, re-create SAN FC connections.

Help would be really appreciated here.

Hello,

We have a problem with Traffic Flow for some VLANs, in particular for hypervisor management VLAN (separate downlink) and heartbeat and live migration VLANs (another downlink) – one part of hosts in these vlans is available and other is not available.

Our equipment:

2x C7000 chassis with 4x 10Gb FlexFabric 24 port modules, 9x BL460c Gen8 and 6x BL460c Gen9 servers, HP 7506 + 3Com S7906E IRF, 1x VC Domain

BL460c Gen8 have HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 554FLB Adapter

BL460c Gen9 have HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 536FLB Adapter

Blade Servers OS is Windows Server 2012R2

VC configuration:

1. VC Firmware version 4.30

2. Stacking Links:

enc0:Bay1:PortX1-2 – enc1:Bay1:PortX1-2

enc0:Bay1:PortX7-8 – enc0:Bay2:PortX7-8

enc0:Bay2:PortX1-2 – enc1:Bay2:PortX1-2

enc1:Bay1:PortX7-8 – enc1:Bay2:PortX7-8

3. Shared Uplink Sets (all VLANs):

enc0:Bay2:PortX5-6

enc1:Bay1:PortX5-6

4. Ethernet Adapter Connections for servers:

LOM1:1-a => Bay 1:dx:v1 (Multiple Networks, mgmt-1)

LOM1:2-a => Bay 2:dx:v1 (Multiple Networks, mgmt-2)

LOM1:1-c => Bay 1:dx:v3 (Multiple Networks, data vlans-1)

LOM1:2-c => Bay 2:dx:v3 (Multiple Networks, data vlans-2)

LOM1:1-d => Bay 1:dx:v4 (Multiple Networks, HB-1, LM-1)

LOM1:2-d => Bay 2:dx:v4 (Multiple Networks, HB-2, LM-2)

The adapter pairs are teamed with switch independent dynamic configuration after Hyper-V role installed. When disable one adapter in the pair in OS, traffic doesn’t flow by second path (failover is absent)

5. Ethernet Networks:

• Private: Disabled
• Smart Link: Enabled
• Native: Disabled

6.

->show status
Overall Domain Status : Normal : The domain is fully functional.

Status Cause : All enclosures and profiles are normal in domain

Critical : 0
Major : 0
Minor : 0
Warning : 0
Informational : 0
Unknown : 0

IRF ports to SUS are aggregated independently for each SUS and have hybrid link-type with all vlan tagged and stp edged-port enabled

HI community,

We are using 2 HP C7000 enclosure in one of our produciton sites. Enclosures are operating in link-loss mode.

Each enclosure has 2 VC modules and the VC domain is formed by 4 VC mosules in two enclosures. 

OA firmware version is: 4.40

VC firmware version is: 4.45

In virtual connect system log we randomly experience VCM-OA communication down event.

I have removed DNS entries from EBIPA section for Interconnect bays. (since this was recommended by some of the community posts), but this didnt change the situation.

Detail of the error is like,

[VCD:enc1:1003:Critical] VCM-OA communication down
[ENC:enc1:2011:Critical] Enclosure state NO_COMM : Enclosure is no-comm, Previous: Enclosure state OK, Cause: Enclosure enc1 unable to communicate with OA.

As per my knowledge, VCM and OA shall try to communicate internally through enclosure back pane.

Can anyone please suggest the root cause and resolution please??

regards,

Shadid

Guys, 

Need a suggestion. 

We have a new C7000, with couple of Flex10/10D modules.  We need to connect this to core switch(which is Cisco 4506), and have the following doubts - 

1. Both are stiuated in different rooms. Which cable to use, and what is the maximum distance it allows between enclosure and Core Switch ? 

2.  On one end we have Flex10/10D, and on the other end we have Cisco 4506 as core switch. If we are using a Fiber cable(or maybe a twinax cable ?), how would the connection work at both ends  ? Fiber at Flex10 end, and RJ45 at Core Switch end ? Maybe a transceiver ?

3.  Will the connection work when we have 1GB limitation at core switch, but Flex10 works on 10GB ports ?  

4.  Finally, if we fill up c7000 with all 16 blades(each with 1 ethernet card and 1 HBA with 2 ports ( 560FLB FIO + 560M + 2572 8GB FC Adapter)) - how many Flex10/10D modules are sufficient (we have ordered 2 for now)?  

Hi all,

I have installed RHEL 7.2 on HP bl660c gen 9 server with HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 536FLB Adapter.

Additionally I have installed the kmod-netxtreme2-7.13.04.1-1.rhel7u2.x86_64.rpm driver and updated the server with online firmware upgrade utility CP027566.scexe successfully and performed a reboot.

Apparently the server doesn't do a FLOGI into the brocade 300b switch.

additional steps include;

followed the following link;

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Storage_Administration_Guide/fcoe-config.html -  for interfaces eno49 and en050.

[root@CAD-MVCSVR3 ~]# fcoeadm -i
No FCoE interfaces created.

attached is an output of other actions done.

Your help will be appreciated.

A costumer of mine has an IRF stack where one member resides on site A and the other member resides on site B. On site A, there is an enclosure with two VC ethernet module, one into bay 1 and one into bay2. VCs are already configured for active/standby. There are four uplinks from one member to one enclosure, so I believe I need to configure two link aggregations: one for VC on bay 1 and one for VC on bay 2.
Right?
Thanks.

So we have 4 interconnect bays, none linked. We have a C7000 Chassis with 16 blades with  ESXi installed. Our standalone ESXi hosts are configured with 6 NICS, 2 for management, 2 for vMotion and 2 set up as trunks to a Distributed vSwitch in vCenter and 2 Fibre connections for SAN. How can we get this same type of configuration set up using the Virtual Connect. X1 and X2 on the InterConnect bays are going to a Brocade Switch for SAN, X5 and X6 are Trunking to a Cisco switch, and all are going to different switches for Redundancy. All 4 InterConnects are set up the same way. How would be the best way to configure the Shared Uplink Sets and Server profiles to get our same type of set up as standalone hosts?

Hey guys,

Do you know a way, in a scenario with HPE Virtual Connect and VMware vSwitch, to deploy a load-balancing policy that will use all the uplinks in the Virtual Connect, not only half of them (I know IP-hash based is not supported and creates MAC flapping on the back switches).

Any advise will be highly appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi Everyone,

One of our site we are using flex-10/10D virtual connect module having the firmware of 4.40. Six blades 460 Gen 9 and using Flex fabric 20Gb 2 port 650 FLB adapter. Is there any possibility to configure redundancy at VC level with Active/Active scenario. We don't want any sort of teaming or bonding at OS level. Several time we tried to configure redundancy at VC level in between Bay 1 and Bay 2 ports but always getting Active/SBY configuration.

I need to mirror some ports of my virtual enviroment to another VM this is my scenario

* 2 x C7000

* 2 x HP VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Module in each C7000

* 9 ESXi 5.5 Update 2

* 1 vDS

* 2 Portgroup, one for management and other for traffic capture ( vLAN 8 )

* One "traffic" vm with ip address 10.0.0.1

* One "Capture VM" with ip address 192.168.0.1 with 2 interfaces one in vLAN 8 for capture

DVS have 2 session configured and enabled

* Enable "Remote Mirroring Source" to capture all the traffic from "traffic" VM and encapsulate to another vLAN ( 8 )

* Enable "Remote Mirroring Destination" to capture all traffic from vLAN 8 and send traffic to Capture VM

This setup does not work, after some google find an PDF from HPe saiyng that: "HP Virtual Connect for c-Class BladeSystems - Virtual Connect Cannot be
Used to Forward Captured Packets from External Span, rspan or Mirror
ports"

There is another way to capture traffic from one o more VMs and send this traffic to another VM ?

We want to directly link an HP SAN MSA 2040 unit to two VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port switch components in our C7000 chassis.

We installed 8Gb SFP+ AJ716B transceivers into both the 2040 SAN unit as well as the FlexFabric switches in ports X1-X4. The FlexFabric Virtual Connect Manager shows these as "unsupported" however.

From what we can determine, the FlexFabric switches should support AJ716A transceivers.

Can we use AJ716A on the FlexFabric side, and AJ716B on the 2040 SAN side?

What is the proper supported configuration?