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Table Of Contents
Cisco UCS Director Release Notes, Release 4.1
New Performance Monitoring Feature for VMware Accounts
New Converged Infrastructure Features
New Orchestration Features and Enhancements
New Application Container Features
New Features in Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.1
New Features in Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.2
Support for Associating VNX LUN as Datastore on Powerpath-enabled Hosts
Support for Windows based Solution Enabler with VMAX
Resolved Caveats—Patch Release 4.1.0.1
Resolved Caveats—Patch Release 4.1.0.2
Workflow Task Input/Output Changes
Cisco UCS Director Documentation Roadmap
Cisco UCS Documentation Roadmaps
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
Cisco UCS Director Release Notes, Release 4.1
First Published: December 16, 2013Last Updated: February 7, 2014Part Number: OL-30266-01 E0This document describes the features, caveats, and limitations for Cisco UCS Director software. Use this document in combination with documents listed in Related Documentation.
Note
Release notes are sometimes updated with new information about restrictions and caveats. See the following website for the most recent version of the Cisco UCS Director Release Notes, Release 4.1:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps13050/tsd_products_support_general_information.html
Table 1 shows the online change history for this document.
Contents
This document includes the following sections:
•
Workflow Task Input/Output Changes
Introduction
Cisco UCS Director delivers unified, highly secure management for the industry's leading converged infrastructure solutions, which are based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms.
Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and network layers through Cisco UCS to provide data center administrators with comprehensive visibility and management capability. It supports NetApp FlexPod and ExpressPOD, EMC VSPEX, and Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) Vblock systems, based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms.
Cisco UCS Director was formerly known as Cloupia Unified Infrastructure Controller and as Cisco Cloupia.
System Requirements
Table 2 lists the system requirements for Cisco UCS Director Release 4.1.
Supported Browser Versions
Cisco UCS Director supports the following browsers:
•
Internet Explorer 8 or higher
•
Google Chrome 4.1 or higher
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Firefox 3.5 or higher
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Safari 4.0 or higher (for Apple Mac or Microsoft Windows)
Browsers require the Adobe Flash Player 11 plug-in.
New and Changed Information
This section includes the following topics:
•
New Features in Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.1
•
New Features in Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.2
New Features in Release 4.1
The following features are available in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1:
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New Performance Monitoring Feature for VMware Accounts
•
New Converged Infrastructure Features
•
New Orchestration Features and Enhancements
•
New Application Container Features
New Scalability Feature
For Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, the distributed architecture of a multi-node setup enables you to scale Cisco UCS Director to support a larger number of virtual machines (VMs) than is supported by a single installation of Cisco UCS Director. The multi-node setup is supported for Cisco UCS Director on 64-bit operating systems only.
This setup includes the following nodes:
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One primary node that acts as the master controller.
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One or more service nodes that act as stateless execution engines.
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One monitoring database that contains data for users, groups, VMs, virtual data centers, and configuration.
•
One inventory database that contains monitoring and inventory data.
The multi-node setup improves scalability by offloading the processing of system tasks, such as inventory data collection, from the primary node to one or more service nodes. You can assign certain system tasks to one or more service nodes. The number of nodes determines how the processing of system tasks is scaled.
You can enable and disable system tasks or assign service node pools to system tasks for load balancing.
New API/SDK Features
Cisco UCS Director REST API—The northbound REST (Representational State Transfer) API enables you to perform operations on Cisco UCS Director resources and to integrate those operations into applications so that they can provide API-supported functionality and features. This API includes the following:
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Protocols—HTTP and HTTPS
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Data format—Combination of JSON and XML
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Operations—Create, read, update, and delete for most operations in Cisco UCS Director
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SDK—Java SDK
Cisco UCS Director Open Automation API—The southbound Open Automation API is part of a development platform architecture that includes the Cisco UCS Director Platform Runtime, a set of modules, and an SDK. This API enables you to develop and deploy a module that can be executed on Cisco UCS Director platform runtime, adding and integrating that functionality into Cisco UCS Director, including the following:
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Adding new connectors for devices
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Adding new workflow tasks
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Creating new tabular reports
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Creating new forms
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Creating new scheduled tasks
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Creating new inventory collection tasks
New Performance Monitoring Feature for VMware Accounts
For VMware virtual accounts, Cisco UCS Director no longer monitors all parameters collected from VMware vCenter by default.
A new data collection policy now handles monitoring of all VMware vCenter parameters. By default, the data collection policy is only configured to monitor the following parameters:
You can also enable one or more of the following parameters if you want to monitor them:
For information about which parameters are enabled by default, and which reports are populated by which parameters, see the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide, Release 4.1.
New Compute Features
Cisco UCS Central, Release1.1—Support includes the following features:
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Creation of pools and policies
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Assignment of domains to pods
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Register and unregister of Cisco UCS Manager accounts
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Global and local policies, service profiles, and service profile templates
Cisco UCS Manager, Release 2.1(3a)—Support includes the following features:
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Local disk configuration policies
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Maintenance policies
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Time zones
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Assignment of blade servers and server pools to groups
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Association of service profile templates to server pools
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New workflow tasks for VLANs, server pools, service profiles, and service profile templates
C-Series Cisco Integrated Management Controller, Release 1.5—Support includes the following features:
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Enhanced inventory collection
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New reports for storage adapter, VIC adapter, and network adapter
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Launch of KVM console from Cisco UCS Director
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Baremetal provisioning with local boot and SAN boot
New Networking Features
Networking Devices
Table 3 lists the network devices for which support has been added in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1.
Networking Software Features
Cisco Nexus 1000V—Support includes the following features:
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HA inventory
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VXLAN Gateway
Cisco Nexus Virtual Security Gateway (VSG)—Support for VSG has been added through application containers. See New Application Container Features.
Cisco Prime Network Services Controller (PNSC)—Support includes the following features:
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PNSC accounts
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Inventory collection and inventory reports
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Actions and workflow tasks
SAN Zones—Support includes the following features:
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A separate task to create and delete a SAN zone
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A separate task to add and remove SAN zone members
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A new task to add and remove SAN zoneset members
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Add and remove a device alias
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The ability to provide device alias and zoneset names
SSH Tasks—Support includes the following features:
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Error scenarios
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Returning command output
New Storage Features
Storage Devices
Table 4 lists the storage devices for which support has been added in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1.
Table 4 Updated Storage Device Support
Device Supported Models Supported SoftwareEMC VNX
VNX 7600
VNX 8000
MCx OS, v8.1.0 and higher
Storage Software Features
EMC VNX—Support includes the following features:
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CIFS Server
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CIFS Share
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File System Quota
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SnapView
EMC VMAX—Support includes the following features:
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Fast policy operations, including storage group operations for those policies
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Storage tier operations, including disk group and thin pool operations for a storage tier
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Fast Controller including status, parameters and settings, and enabling and disabling
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Data Dev operations
NetApp—Support is available for OnTap 8.2 and Clustered OnTap. This support includes the following features:
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Create Datastore using VSC with select vserver name and vfiler name inputs
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Create ClusterFlexibleVolume with new, mandatory input of flexcache origin volume name for type DC
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Delete Export policy and rule
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Binding error improvements for associate LUN as datastore.
NetApp CMODE—Support includes the following features:
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Create, read, update, and delete operations on aggregates, CIFS servers, shares, ACLs, snapshot policies, and schedules
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Restoring files
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Licensing
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iSCSI initiators
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Quotas on volumes and Qtrees
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FCP
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iGroups
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Cloning LUNs
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Configuring DNS, NFS, LIF, and cluster nodes
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Provisioning VMs through VSC CMODE storage
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SIS
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SnapMirror
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vServer peering and cluster peering.
New Virtualization Features
VMware vSphere Enhancements
VMware vSphere Version—Support is available for VMware vSphere 5.5.
Data Store Monitoring Report Enhancements—Support includes the following features:
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Disk latency
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I/O throughput and IOPs
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Total, used, and overprovisioned capacity
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Overcommitment ratio
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VMs
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vmdk disk latency report
Virtual Data Centers (VDCs)—The ability to apply target VDC policies when moving a VM across VDCs.
VMware Policy Enhancements—Support includes the following features:
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VDC System Policy now includes a time zone options list and support for all regions
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VDC Storage policy for VMware now includes a thin provisioning option (Flexibility)
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A new IP Pool policy for defining static IP addresses
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A new flexible VDC network policy that allows for a different set of VM network requirements
VMware Tasks and Actions Enhancements—Support includes the following features:
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Create a VMKernel port group on a standard VMware vSwitch
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Remove an ESXi host from a Distributed vSwitch
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VM Cloning task and Guest OS Customization
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VM Select task
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Ability to hot add more CPU and Memory to VMs.
Microsoft Hyper-V Enhancements
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Version—Support is available for SCVMM 2012 R2.
Software Features—Support includes the following features:
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Orchestration capabilities extended to attached external storage in SCVMM (SMB/LUN<SMI-S proxy>) including allocation and configuration for SCVMM 2012SP1 and SCVMM 2012R2 base clusters/hosts
•
Orchestration capabilities extended to VLAN base networking model with respect to SCVMM2012 SP1 and SCVMM 2012 R2
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Host management tasks
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VMM version support extended to SCVMM 2012 R2 in Inventory/Report/Provision/Configuration
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VM access—Web & RDP
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REST API Support
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Covered the Customer Onboarding workflow gaps (limited to VLAN base Network model only)
New Converged Infrastructure Features
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Vblock 700 Series
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EMC-based VSPEX 125 and 250
New Orchestration Features and Enhancements
Custom Tasks—You can use custom tasks to create new workflow tasks with well-defined inputs and outputs. In Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, the logic for these tasks are implemented through Cloupia script, which includes JavaScript and Cisco UCS Director libraries.
Custom tasks can be exported from one Cisco UCS Director deployment and imported into another. In Cisco UCS Director, they are managed in the same location as other orchestration tasks and workflows.
After you have created a custom task, there is no inherent difference between that custom task and the tasks that are provided with Cisco UCS Director.
Orchestration Enhancements—The enhancements to orchestration in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, include the following:
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All users with administrator privileges can view and edit workflow inputs and outputs in service requests.
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Workflow user inputs can be configured as mandatory or optional.
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Workflow user inputs can be changed and resubmitted for a failed or cancelled service Request. Task inputs cannot be modified.
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When tasks are added or modified, workflow inputs can be created or cross-launched.
New Application Container Features
Cisco Nexus Virtual Security Gateway (VSG)—Support has been added to integrate VSG into application containers, including the following:
•
Firewall policies, including zones, ACLs, and a VSG details template
•
Virtual infrastructure policies, including VSG containers and an external gateway
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VSG application container
New Features in Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.1
The following features are available in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.1:
New Server-Based Licensing
Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.1 includes server-based licensing, and you can order server-based PIDs.
Details:
•
Customers are entitled to storage and network licenses with each physical server license (1:1 for Physical and 1:1/2 for Bare Metal).
•
For each server quantity purchased, customers will be entitled to 50 VMs, one network and one storage.
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Existing storage, network, and other licenses will be converted to server licenses upon upgrade to Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.1.
New Features in Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.2
The following features are available in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, Patch 4.1.0.2:
•
Support for Associating VNX LUN as Datastore on Powerpath-enabled Hosts
•
Support for Windows based Solution Enabler with VMAX
Support for Associating VNX LUN as Datastore on Powerpath-enabled Hosts
Cisco UCS Director now allows you to associate a VNX LUN as a data store on Powerpath-enabled hosts.
Support for Windows based Solution Enabler with VMAX
To communicate with VMAX, Cisco UCS Director now supports a Windows-hosted application to perform the installation of the EMC Solution Enabler.
Installation Notes
Cisco UCS Director is a 64-bit appliance that uses the standard VHD template, and can be hosted on VMware vSphere or vCenter and Microsoft Hyper-V Manager.
For installation instructions, see the following guides:
•
Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on Microsoft Hyper-V Manager, Release 4.1
•
Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 4.1
The installation guides are available on Cisco.com here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps13050/prod_installation_guides_list.html
Caveats
This section includes the following topics:
•
Resolved Caveats—Patch Release 4.1.0.1
•
Resolved Caveats—Patch Release 4.1.0.2
Note
Release note information is sometimes updated after the product Release Notes document is published. Use the Cisco Bug Search Tool to see the most up-to-date release note information for any caveat listed in this document.
Open Caveats
Table 5 lists the caveats that are open in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1.
Table 5 Open Caveats in Release 4.1
Defect ID Symptom WorkaroundCSCul21096
Inserts, reads, updates and deletes on the Cisco UCS Director databases causes disk fragmentation.
Run an OPTIMIZE command on the VM. For more information, see the Cisco UCS Director installation guides for Release 4.1.
CSCul59462
After an upgrade from Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.0 to Release 4.1, the port group is not mapped in network policies that were edited or updated in Release 4.0.
In Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, do the following:
1.
Open the network policy.
2.
Map the appropriate port groups.
3.
Save the network policy.
CSCul51752
After upgrading to Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, the new data collection policy for VMware results in some parameters not being monitored and some graphs being empty
This is by design. The policy controls which parameters are monitored. You must enable the parameters that you want to monitor.
For more information, see Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide, Release 4.1.
CSCug91645
While trying to add VM disks to 4 SCSI adapters, intermittently observed that the VM disk could not be added. The following exception was seen during the attempt to add the VM disk:
Exception trace **********************
java.lang.Exception: Disk could not be added for Win-XP-move
All connectivity from the server to PowerShell Agent and from the PowerShell Agent to the Microsoft HyperV hypervisor was fine.
Ensure that the VM is in an SCVMM-supported state before you add the VM disks. This issue happens intermittently if the VM is not in a state that supports the operation. This error is from SCVMM.
CSCui12211
Rollback (undo) is not available for the following Hyper-V orchestration tasks:
•
Mount iSCSI LUN
•
Bringing Disk online and formatting
•
Create VM placement path
Manually undo the changes made through those tasks.
CSCui27399
When you add a vFiler or set up a vFiler with the action buttons available on the vFilers tab, there is no option to specify the vFiler root password.
To specify a root password for an existing vFiler, use the setup option available in the one of the following workflows to create vFilers:
•
Create vFiler using ONTAP workflow
•
Create vFiler setup workflow
CSCui19131
The memory size is displayed differently for the fabric interconnect and Cisco UCS Manager.
In the Fabric Interconnects report, the available memory size displays in MB, but in Cisco UCS manager, the available memory size displays in GB. In addition, if the available memory is 13.927 GB, it should show the MB value as 14261.248 but instead displays the wrong value.
Use Cisco UCS Manager to obtain the available memory size for a fabric interconnect.
CSCui58095
When the a NetApp volume is offline and you apply a Dedupe On or Dedupe Off action, The storage controller intermittently generates a misleading error message stating that the volume does not exist even though the volume is only in the offline state.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCui66016
Automation of baremetal provisioning fails with an HP custom image (iLO4) because the host shuts down immediately after ESXi deployment.
Do the following:
1.
Manually power on the host.
2.
Execute the task to change the boot order to local disk.
3.
Execute the Register Host to vCenter task.
CSCul24274
Memory/CPU hot add feature fails on VMware VMs,when the Hot add property is not enabled on the VM.
Enable _the property (HOT add) on the VM using the VMware vCenter client.
CSCul26798
For NFS datastore, the Read IOP, Write IOP, and throughput reports are empty in Cisco UCS Director although values are present when seen in VMware vCenter for the same datastore.
There is no known workaround for this issue as the API for NFS datastores does not return any data.
CSCul34832
The REST API Read option for tasks in a VMAX device does not work.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCul55929
In Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, the term Data Center was replaced with Pod. However, Cisco UCS Director still displays Data Center instead of Pod in some areas.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCul57170
Some errors in a workflow are not identified during workflow validation, such as non-existent or missing values. However, when you execute the workflow, the workflow fails and the error message identifies the incorrect or missing values.
After the workflow fails to execute, update the workflow with the correct values and re-execute the workflow.
CSCul91019
The previous tasks Add Cluster Volume NFS Export and Remove Cluster Volume NFS Export no longer work. These tasks have been replaced with Mount Cluster Volume and Unmount Cluster Volume.
Use the following new tasks instead:
•
Mount Cluster Volume
•
Unmount Cluster Volume
CSCum05246
No rollback (undo) is available for reserved IP address when the Resource Allocation task is executed.
Manually undo the IP reservations through one of the following:
•
From the Reservations tab
•
Through Global IP Pool usage
CSCum06481
After an upgrade to Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1, some workflow tasks result in binding errors.
Remap the bindings for those workflow tasks.
For more information, see Workflow Task Input/Output Changes.
CSCum01980
When a VM is provisioned after the VM metering task is completed in the second half of an hour, the charge for the VM does not begin until the following hour.
In this scenario, the VM cost is not charged for the hour in which it is provisioned.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCum09723
After a Windows VM is cloned, the password reset fails.
Use the "Guest Setup" task to reset the password.
CSCum06612
When the CIMC power on / off, boot order change tasks are executed, the MAC address is displayed as an output attribute. However, only the vNIC MAC address is displayed.
The MAC address output is needed for the PXE setup task for baremetal provisioning.
Add the MAC address manually for the PXE setup task.
CSCze09420
Cisco UCS and CIMC events and faults fail to generate intermittently.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCum07544
File systems and export paths are not filtered and displayed in the Mover drill-down according to the mover that is selected.
In addition, the mover information is not displayed in the file system and export paths to show the mover to which they belong.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCum10733
The Export Path action fails to perform under any mover except "Mover-2". For any other mover, the task fails with an invalid export path error.
Use the Create Export path task. This creates an export path under all active movers.
CSCum01236
For the Create Initiator Group task, if you select FCP type and do not create an initiator name, the task fails.
Provide an initiator name in the Create Initiator Group task.
CSCul40043
If multiple Symmetric devices are managed under one Solution Enabler, Cisco UCS Director displays only the first device.
Manage only one Symmetric device per Solution Enabler.
CSCum16900
If you give the zone name as an admin input for the Generic Configure SAN Zoning workflow task, the task fails.
Manually enter the zone name.
CSCum16890
When you use the Generic Configure SAN Zoning task to create a new zoneset, Cisco UCS Director creates the zoneset with the first active zoneset name.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCum16842
Create VDC task succeeds but cloning of the network policy fails.
Create or update the network Policy in Cisco UCS Director from Policies > Network > VMWare Network Policies.
CSCum17896
Datadev creation fails for Cisco UCS Director on Microsoft Hyper-v due to the length of time it takes to perform the task and the slowness of the setup.
There is no known workaround for this issue.
CSCum92118
Patch upgrade fails if NFS mount is configured for Storage Appliance.
Disable any Appliance Storage that is used to configure external storage (NFS mount) before you apply the patch.
Resolved Caveats—Patch Release 4.1.0.1
Table 6 lists the caveats that are resolved in Cisco UCS Director, Patch Release 4.1.0.1.
Resolved Caveats—Patch Release 4.1.0.2
Table 7 lists the caveats that are resolved in Cisco UCS Director, Patch Release 4.1.0.2.
Workflow Task Input/Output Changes
Table 8 displays the workflow task input/output changes found in Cisco UCS Director, Release 4.1.
Related Documentation
Cisco UCS Director Documentation Roadmap
For a complete list of Cisco UCS Director documentation, see the Cisco UCS Director Documentation Roadmap available at the following URL: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/ucs-director/doc-roadmap/b_UCSDirectorDocRoadmap.html
Cisco UCS Documentation Roadmaps
For a complete list of all Cisco UCS B-Series documentation, see the Cisco UCS B-Series Servers Documentation Roadmap available at the following URL: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/overview/guide/UCS_roadmap.html
For a complete list of all Cisco UCS C-Series documentation, see the Cisco UCS C-Series Servers Documentation Roadmap available at the following URL: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/overview/guide/UCS_rack_roadmap.html
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Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
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