Starting from the July 2011 Release 1.5 of the Cisco® Services Ready Engine Virtualization (SRE-V) software for the Cisco Unified Computing System™ Express (Cisco UCS™ Express), the software provides full functional parity with VMware vSphere Hypervisor™ Release 4.1 and integrated Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) management. To support these new features, Cisco SRE-V Release 1.5 introduces a change to the license activation process that affects existing customers of Cisco SRE-V Releases 1.0 and 1.1 who want to migrate to the 1.5 or later releases.
New Features
The following is a summary of new features and functionality introduced in Cisco SRE-V Release 1.5 starting from July 2011.
• Management and guest OS feature parity with VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) Release 4.1:
– Optional ability to manage the Cisco SRE-V software through VMware vCenter™ Server. This feature can be purchased with the Cisco SRE-V hypervisor license or at a later time as an upgrade license to the base Cisco SRE-V hypervisor license.
In addition, Cisco has performed independent verification of some of the most widely deployed general-purpose enterprise-class Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Oracle Linux, and others.
– Support for VMware ESXi Tech Support Mode (TSM), native VMware ESXi user management, and access to all root user privileges.
• RAID management introduced in Cisco SRE-V Release 1.1 has now been fully integrated into VMware ESXi. All RAID management functions are performed through the VMware ESXi shell command-line interface (CLI).
License Activation Change for Migration from Release 1.0 or 1.1 to Release 1.5 or Later
To support the new Cisco SRE-V Release 1.5 features, Cisco has changed the license activation process. In Releases 1.0 and 1.1, license activation was performed through the Cisco Software Licensing (CSL) tool. In Release 1.5 and later, VMware management tools are used to activate Cisco SRE-V licenses.
As of July 20, all new orders for Cisco SRE-V licenses will ship with VMware license activation codes or VMware licenses keys if the licenses are ordered with the Cisco SRE hardware. License keys issued prior to this date will not work when migrating to Cisco SRE-V Release 1.5 or later, and must be exchanged for new license keys.
Please email ucse-customer@cisco.com to exchange your Cisco SRE-V Release 1.0 or 1.1 license keys for the new Cisco SRE-V license keys. Include the following information in the email:
• Customer name
• List of Cisco SRE-V CSL activation codes
In addition, if available, provide the following information:
• Cisco sales representative
• Order fulfillment partner
• Order date
• Customer Purchase Order (PO) number or Cisco Sales Order (SO) number for the licenses purchased
Upgrade Paths
Cisco SRE-V Releases 1.0 and 1.1 can be migrated to Release 1.5 or later. In addition to the software update, you must do the following to complete the migration:
• Exchange licenses as described in the previous section.
• Automatically migrate virtual machines by choosing to retain the data store when updating Cisco SRE-V software from the older to the newer software release.
Table 1 provides list of changes and new licenses introduced in Cisco SRE-V Release 1.5.
Table 1. Cisco SRE-V Software Licenses for Release 1.5
License Part Number
Description
FL-SRE-V-HOST
License to permanently activate Cisco SRE-V. Paper delivery. Installed and activated by user.
FL-SRE-V-HOST=
Product authorization key to permanently activate Cisco SRE-V license. Paper delivery. Installed and activated by user.
L-FL-SRE-V-HOST=
Product authorization key to permanently activate Cisco SRE-V license. Electronic delivery. Installed and activated by user.
FL-SRE-V-HOSTVC
License to permanently activate Cisco SRE-V with VMware vCenter Server management agent. Paper delivery. Installed and activated by user.
FL-SRE-V-HOSTVC=
Product authorization key to permanently activate Cisco SRE-V with VMware vCenter Server management agent. Paper delivery. Installed and activated by user.
L-FL-SRE-V-HOSTVC=
Product authorization key to permanently activate Cisco SRE-V with VMware vCenter Server management agent. Electronic delivery. Installed and activated by user.
FL-SRE-V-VC-UPG=
Product authorization key to permanently activate VMware vCenter Server management agent on existing Cisco SRE-V host. Paper delivery. Installed and activated by user.
L-FL-SRE-V-VC-UPG=
Product authorization key to permanently activate VMware vCenter Server management agent on existing Cisco SRE-V host. Electronic delivery. Installed and activated by user.
For More Information
For more information about Cisco UCS Express, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ucse/ or contact your local Cisco account representative.
