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VMware and HP have both released advisories which say you shouldn’t use HP Virtual Connect in tunnel mode if you are using vCloud Director Network Isolation (vCDNI) which is MAC-in-MAC encapsulation.

There are two network modes available with Virtual Connect, Tunnel Mode and Mapped Mode.

When using Tunnel Mode, Virtual Connect passes all tagged and untagged packets through the Virtual Connect switch down to select blades where the VLANs are split into port groups. The uplinks are therefore considered dedicated uplinks as control over which VLANs are trunked is done at the upstream switch and so you can’t have a different set of VLANs going to Blade 1 and Blade 2 while still utilising the same uplinks. You could obviously have separate sets of uplinks for Blade 1 and Blade 2 to achieve this. The advantage of tunneling mode is only having to specify your VLANs once at the upstream switch and being able to pass all VLANs down the same trunk to multiple blades and only having to manage VLANs at the upstream switch and port groups on the ESXi host or within the vSphere Distributed Switch.

In Mapped Mode  mode, the Virtual Connect switch examines all the VLANs and by defining Ethernet Networks for each VLAN on the Virtual Connect switch you can selectively pass down all or some of the VLANs down to the blades. The uplinks are considered shared as you can trunk all VLANs you will need for any blade and for example have some VLANs going to Blade 1 and other VLANs going to Blade 2 but sharing the same uplinks. In order to do this you  have to create separate Ethernet Networks for every VLAN (possibly two for redundancy) and manage VLANs at both the upstream and Virtual Connect switches as well as port groups on the ESXi host or within the vSphere Distributed Switch.

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HP has updated its ESXi 5.x customised images as part of its Service Pack for Proliant (SPP) Feb 2013 update.

HP’s customised images are fully integrated sets of specific drivers and software that are tested to work together. You can see the list of Driver Versions in HP supplied VMware ESX/ESXi images.

I have done an extensive update of my HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 & VMware ESX(i) pre-requisites post which includes these new customised images.

HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.1 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-HP-5.34.23.iso

The new and updated features for the HP vSphere 5.1 Customized Image for February 2013 include:

• Provider Features:
  • Report installed licenses for HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller.
  • Report New memory properties.
  • Support for IP Address encoding in SNMP traps.
  • Support SMX MemoryModuleOnBoard association.
  • HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller split cache support.
  • Report New RAID levels for storage volume fault tolerance.
  • HP Smart Cache support.
  • Update reporting of Smart Array Cache Status to align with firmware and iLO.
• AMS features:
  • Report running SW processes to HP Insight Remote Support.
  • Report vSphere 5.1 SNMP agent management IP and enable VMware vSphere 5.1 SNMP agent to report iLO4 management IP.
  • IML logging for NIC, and SAS traps.
  • Limit AMS log file size and support log redirection as defined by the ESXi host parameter: ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation
• SR-IOV Support:
  • Updated Intel 10Gb network driver to enable SR-IOV for the HP 560FLB, 560M, 560SFP+, and 560FLR-SFP+.

HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.0.0 Update 2 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.0.0-Update2-914586-HP-5.27.20.iso

The new and updated features for the HP vSphere 5.0 U2 Customized Image for February 2013 include:

• Provider Features:
  • Report installed licenses for HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller.
  • Report New memory properties.
  • Support for IP Address encoding in SNMP traps.
  • Support SMX MemoryModuleOnBoard association.
  • HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller split cache support.
  • Report New RAID levels for storage volume fault tolerance.
  • HP Smart Cache support.
  • Update reporting of Smart Array Cache Status to align with firmware and iLO.
• AMS features:
  • Report running SW processes to HP Insight Remote Support.
  • IML logging for NIC, and SAS traps.
  • Limit AMS log file size and support log redirection as defined by the ESXi host parameter: ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation

Emulex has released a new set of drivers and firmware for use on Gen8 and G7 HP Servers including blades with both VMware ESXi 5.0 and 5.1.

Driver:
Emulex be2net nic driver version 4.2.327.0 which is included in the HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.1 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-HP-5.34.23.iso and HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.0.0 Update 2 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.0.0-Update2-914586-HP-5.27.20.iso or can be downloaded separately from VMware.

Emulex has also released a newer driver version 4.4.231.0 which is available from VMware but this isn’t supported as yet by HP.

Firmware:
Emulex firmware version 4.2.401.605 which can be updated using the Emulex OneConnect-Flash .ISO.

There was a 4.2.401.6 released but this has been superseded by 4.2.401.605 which fixes a number of issues.

I have done an extensive update of my HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 & VMware ESX(i) pre-requisites post which includes these new Emulex drivers and firmware.

I have had the pleasure today of presenting at the second  UK VMware User Group. at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull, near Birmingham.

My presentation was titled vSphere Networking and Converged IO with Blade Servers.

I discussed how converged networking incorporating 10GE and FCoE is become more important as we try to utilise bandwidth more efficiently which is especially important with blade servers which have limited IO expansion. I explained the architecture of Cisco UCS and HP Virtual Connect as examples and how they can work with vSphere.

I went through some of the IO convergence options and also how to still protect your traffic by using either physical or logical separation or software.

No need to repeat everything else in this blog post, you may as well have a look at the presentation and best of all plan to attend a VMUG near you!

Update: 11 November – WIN A FANTASTIC PRIZE!!!

During my session I will be giving away a voucher for FREE access to all on-demand recorded VMworld 2012 sessions and content which includes:

1. Videos (general sessions and super sessions)
2. Flash presentations w/ audio over slides (all breakout sessions)
3. PDF downloads (all sessions and labs)
4. MP3 podcats (all sessions)
5. Demo videos and scripts (select sessions and labs)

Just attend my session and have a chance to win this amazing prize, worth more than £500!!

Registration is now open for the second annual combined national UK VMUG is being held on Thursday 15th November 2012 from 8am-5pm with a pre-event vCurry reception the night before from 7pm-9pm.

The location is the same as last year:

National Motorcycle Museum
Coventry Road
Bickenhill, Solihull, West Mids,
England
B92 0EJ

The day promises to be packed full of in-depth technical sessions, demonstrations and partner exhibits with a speaking line-up that can only be beaten by VMworld itself.

There are presentations by some of VMware’s premiere knowledge experts, including resource and availability gurus Duncan Epping & Frank Denneman, VCDXs Hugo Phan & Aidan Dalgleish, Mr. VMware Storage, Cormac Hogan and automation luminaries Alan Renouf and William Lam along with many others.

You can hear all about VMware’s vision of the Software Defined Data Centre from VMware’s European Chief Technologist Joe Baguley as well as Staying Sharp in IT from well known EMC industry expert Scott Lowe.

What is also exciting is there are a large number of community presentations by independents giving you the real how-to from the trenches sans the marketing.

I’ll be presenting a session on vSphere Networking and Converged IO with Blade Servers. I will be going through how blade servers bring converged IO to vSphere Networking and what design options you have to ensure high performance and availability.

The other community presentations are:

Ricky El-Qasem | Creating VMware Apps for Novice Programmers

Chris Dearden | A Techie’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of IT Support

Mike Laverick | Building my vCloud Director Home Lab

Tom Howarth | Deep Dive on Desktop Design for VDI

VMUGs are fantastic days filled with information that is invaluable to any IT person working with virtualisation. It’s not just the presentations that are useful but the chance to network with fellow IT people and share problems and solutions. Every time I attend I come back with a list of things I’ve learnt.

You can see the full agenda and register here: http://www.myvmug.org/e/in/eid=106&source=5

Looking forward to seeing you there!

The official VMworld Barcelona session catalogue was huge and full of VMware sanctioned content. However running in parallel there was a fantastic community run fringe event.

The #vBrownBag guys stepped up to the plate and spent a lot of personal time to put together a whole series of short Tech Talks where anyone with something to say could have the spotlight.

Now, this wasn’t some soap box in the corner of a room with some nutters yelling into a megaphone but a super organised, livestreamed sponsored event with some serious content.

There were VMware employees and engineers talking about how you can run some seriously awesome yet unsupported VMware configurations as well as some seriously brainy and very highly regarded community members who have a passion for virtualisation and in their own time put together presentations that they thought the VMware community would be interested in.

Luckily these were all recorded so you can take some time out and see for yourself what the VMware community has to contribute.

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HP Blade chassis are integral to many IT infrastructure deployments. Within each chassis there are multiple components: for example Onboard Administrators, network switches running maybe Virtual Connect and the blade servers themselves which contain SSD/HDD drives, Nic or HBA cards, iLOs and motherboards.

All of these components require firmware to run and many of them are from different manufactures such as Nic cards which can be made by Broadcom, Intel or Emulex. Managing this firmware can be a frustrating and time consuming process which adds another management layer separate from the Operating System, applications and even HP drivers installed on the actual blade servers.

HP has previously had a very disparate way of managing it’s firmware and drivers. Different firmware and drivers had to be updated with different tools and was often very little or no coordination between the different updates causing any number of issues.

HP seems to have responded to customer frustration and is now coordinating their firmware and driver update procedures.

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HP has released a new firmware version 4.1.450.7 of its Emulex OneConnect 10Gb Ethernet Controller which is used in HP G7 and G8 Blades.

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=4118472&prodNameId=4118473&swEnvOID=54&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=co-108044-1

This is a standalone image so not part of the HP Service Pack for ProLiant 2012.08.0 release which is unfortunate.

The new firmware release notes state the following:

Added support for the following operating systems:

• RHEL 6.3

Resolved Issues from Firmware Version 4.1.402.20:

• BladeEngine Firmware
• SR IOV: Unable to ping IPV6 from DUT VF to Peer VF
• Running ethtool with BE3 takes longer than expected after cable pull
• FAT_CFG_SNAPSHOT command timed out
• Out of Order CQEs
• Data integrity Issue noted during short duration cable pulls
• W2K8 graceful shutdown failed under B120i with NC552
• BL460c Gen8 with 554FLB Unable to PXE boot
• 1Gb LOM ports in Windows do not come back up when switch is power cycled
• RSCN is not generated by switch when a driver restarts 10. 7 second delay in _CARD_ATTRIBUTES command
• BE3 read sfp ioctl returns bad data on twinax cables that BE2 returns good data with
• 554FLR FCoE Path Multipath Recovery Fail SLES11 sp1 x64
• Out of order Abort completion and IO completion CQE
• Received CQE_EXT_INVALID_RPI in abort completion of ELS command
• Correction to OCSD to prevent DMA conflicts with LPFC driver

PXE BIOS

• PXE issue on Gen 8 blades hang at gPXE prompt when set for one time PXE boot.

UEFI iSCSI

• EFI: CHAP name only accepts 6 to 10 characters
• EFI: iSCSI name is case sensitive

I’ve updated my post: HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 & VMware ESX(i) pre-requisites

Virtual Connect

HP has released its latest Virtual Connect Firmware which is used in HP c-Class Chassis with Flex-10, FlexFabric, VC Enet and FC Module interconnect modules.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-d3c2c57d850f4f4bb9af74c2d6

This release adds support for some new hardware:

• HP ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Server series
• HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Workstation series
• HP Virtual Connect Flex-10/10D Module
• HP 7m C-series Active Copper SFP+ cables (QK701A)
• HP 10m C-series Active Copper SFP+ cables (QK702A)
• Cisco 7m copper active Twinax cables (SFP-H10GB-ACU7M)
• Cisco 10m copper active Twinax cables (SFP-H10GB-ACU10M

You can now rollback from a previous firmware upgrade without having to delete the VC domain which is good news.

There are also number of management enhancements such as Advanced telemetry and statistics for Link Aggregation Groups and FlexNICs and Display of factory default MACs and WWNs in server profiles.

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VMware’s US mega conference, VMworld kicks off in San Francisco in just over 2 weeks time. 19000 people attended in Las Vegas last year (we will have to see whether the choice of venue affects the numbers for this year!)

This will be my first time attending VMworld US as living in London I have attended VMworld Europe previously so am excited to see the differences, enjoy the bigger conference and meet some more fellow vExperts and other community members.

There’s obviously a huge amount that goes on at the conference from the keynote speaches, breakout sessions, panel discussions, labs, formal and informal meetings, and general networking so working out what to actually see with so much going on is harder than many people would assume.

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