Comments for Jeff Said So

Comment on Boot from SAN 101 with Cisco UCS by sip trunking service provider

sip trunking service provider — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:38:24 +0000

I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you?
Plz answer back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to know where u got this from. appreciate it

Comment on UCS Chassis Discovery Policy by Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:25:06 +0000

I need to update this article to include the port-channel options that didn’t exist at that time. Port Channel is definitely what I recommend, but that is independent of the number of links. Changing the discovery policy is not disruptive because it only affects a chassis that you have not discovered yet. However, what you are most likely wanting to do is change a chassis that is already discovered. In that case, you can do this two different ways:
1) Click on the chassis in question and change the Connectivity Policy (this would need to be done on each chassis)
2) Change the global Policy to Port Channel. This will affect each chassis, but not immediately. By default, each chassis uses the global policy for connectivity. If you change the global policy, any chassis that you re-ack will pick up the new settings. This is disruptive. There is no way to go from discrete to port channel on an already discovered chassis without disruption.

You can tell what any chassis is using at any time by clicking on a chassis and checking the Connectivity Policy tab. Look at the two fabrics listed (A and B) and see the Ctype line. If it’s discrete, it will say “Mux Fabric”. If it’s Port Channel, it will say “Mux FabricPC”.

Hope that helps.

Comment on UCS Chassis Discovery Policy by Morne

Morne — Wed, 08 May 2013 07:26:02 +0000

Hi Jeff,

Best practices dictate that I need to change my chassis policy from 4-link to port-channel. Can I do this while the system is in production or is this a disruptive process?

Cheers

Comment on Boot from SAN 101 with Cisco UCS by BC

BC — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:35:19 +0000

Here’s a question for you, how do you deal with SAN Boot configurations if the blade is a Windows server and you’re connected to a VNX array. I can’t get PowerPath to work on UCS blades with any version installed. Yes, the host can see and boot from the lun but when the rest of the paths are added in (because boot from SAN on EMC storage, you present only one path to the disk, not all of them) PP still doesn’t see the array or paths. I’ll probably have to open up a support ticket for this.

Comment on Boot from SAN 101 with Cisco UCS by aoceaumwkybc

aoceaumwkybc — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:50:46 +0000

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Comment on Boot from SAN 101 with Cisco UCS by ieksdkkdutqr

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Comment on UCS BIOS Policies by Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:31:07 +0000

Hey Chris – the default BIOS policy for every server we have is now included with UCS Manager. On the Servers tab, Expand Policies and then look for “BIOS Defaults”. As for What we recommend, I can’t give a straight up answer on that. VMWare makes some BIOS recommendations in their Performance Best Practices Guide for 4.1: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere4.1.pdf. I would follow those first. Then I would look at Cisco’s BIOS performance tuning guide: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps10265/ps10281/whitepaper_c07-614438.pdf

Also, another blog makes some specific recommendations for UCS BIOS policies when running a Virtualized workload that may be of interest (I have not : http://www.sysadmintutorials.com/tutorials/cisco/cisco-ucs/cisco-ucs-fabric-interconnect-bios-policy-setup/

Also, as you poke through the BIOS defaults, note that some BIOS settings are platform specific based on the processor, memory architecture, or other limitations. Policies themselves include all possible options because the policy can be applied to any hardware and we don’t know that in advance.

Comment on UCS BIOS Policies by Chris Horn

Chris Horn — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:32:45 +0000

Jeff – what BIOS Policy settings would you recommend when using B230 M2′s and ESXi 5.1? I ask because the table above doesn’t include the B230 and is a bit dated.

Thanks,
Chris

Comment on When Disaster Strikes… by Resetting UCS to Factory Defaults | Jeff Said So

Resetting UCS to Factory Defaults | Jeff Said So — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:13:51 +0000

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Comment on UCS Chassis Discovery Policy by Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:54:45 +0000

It is most definitely disruptive. Decomm is meant for troubleshooting purposes and for removing retired hardware from the database. If you were to decomm/recomm, the chassis would come back exactly as it was and all profiles would re-associate automatically.