topic Re: VCEM Upgrade in BladeSystem - General

VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:21:31 GMT

Hi All,

I will be embarking on a VCEM upgrade. According to support matric for IC/VCEM 6.3 the below versions are supported. Is this a normal inplace upgrade or is there something I need to do to make this painless.

Current versions:

Insight Control 5.3

VCEM 1.2

OA's 2.32 and 3.30

VC's 3.18 and 2.10

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:30:31 GMT

Hi just an update on this. I started the upgrade of the SIM and VCEM. SIM went through 100% and mentioned that after the SIM install that the VCEM will need to be upgraded. Strange that it did not do it all in one.

Via integrated Installer i started the VCEM install and it complains about the following "Installed version is older incompatible than bundled version" and then cancels installation. Has any body come across this?

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:48:40 GMT

which SIM and VCEM version you are trying to upgrading to?

latest SIM version is 6.3 and latest VCEM version is 6.3.1. You can try to use SIM 6.3 installation DVD for SIM 6.3 and VCEM 6.3 installation and after that run VCEM6.3.1 patch exe file to upgrade VCEM to latest 6.3.1

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:27:08 GMT

Hi yes this is with the 6.3 upgrade media. will only run patch 6.3.1 after 6.3 loaded.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:44:45 GMT

it should work.

Checking the 6.3 release notes here: http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02786886/c02786886.pdf

Which indicates the following, again on page 4:

VCEM 6.3 can be installed as a new console or used to update existing installations of VCEM

1.20, 1.3x, 1.40, 6.0,6.1 or 6.2, and is delivered on Insight Software media 6.3 which can be

downloaded from http://www.hp.com/go/vcem.

Will email offline so you can send screencapture of error message.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:21:33 GMT

Hi I got more details re this:

So SIM upgraded from 5.3.1 to 6.3 100%. I ran the advisory again and for VCEM i get following error

"[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] Checking if VC Domain Group(s) are running on Firmware version 2.10 or above :

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] Detected Firmware version -- 2.00 VC Domain Group name -- GER_VC_DOMAIN_GROUP

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] Detected Firmware version -- 2.00 VC Domain Group name -- GER_VC_FC_DOMAIN_GROUP

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] VC Domain Group(s) running on unsupported Firmware version

As we are running VCEM 1.2 there was no option to Update Domain Group Firmware via VCEM. As i am unable to get this to 2.10 it will not allow me to upgrade to VCEM 6.3. Wha are othe options here?

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:13:39 GMT

Could you send screen capture for your current domain group firmware level?

How many VC domains do you have managed by VCEM? How many domain groups do you have?

Do your VCs run 2.00 or 2.10? In your first post, you said your VC runs 3.18 and 2.10 but the logs says 2.00

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:26:03 GMT

Could you send screen capture for your current domain group firmware level?

Name:
GER_VC_FC_DOMAIN_GROUP
Status:
Configuration in synch
VC Firmware Mode:
2.0x

How many VC domains do you have managed by VCEM? How many domain groups do you have?

1. 2 x VC domain groups, 5X VC domains

Do your VCs run 2.00 or 2.10? In your first post, you said your VC runs 3.18 and 2.10 but the logs says 2.00

VC are running 2.10 and 3.18. Both supported for 6.3.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:40:38 GMT

since your VC is running 2.10 and 3.18, your VCEM 1.20 can only supports up to VC 2.0x version so very likely your VC domains are running 2.0x compability mode in VCEM but my undersanding is that even with that, you should be able to upgrade VCEM1.2 directly to VCEM6.3 per release notes. I also got confirmation internally that you should be able to do it.

unless others offer some other solutions, the next step maybe is to open a HP support case so we can do some troubleshooting.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:32:43 GMT

Tx Hongjun,

Yes as I have read it should be possible to Upgrade. It is just the fact that VCEM 1.2 does not have the ability to update the VC domain Group firmware. As far as I know this gets updated via the VCEM upgrade.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:41:54 GMT

I'm not clear why you think you need to upgrade VCEM1.20 domain group firmware mode to the version above 2.0x in order to continue 6.3 upgrade. VCEM1.2 can support VC version up to 2.0x, which means at most VCEM domain group firmware mode is 2.0x.

If VCEM6.3 release notes say that you can upgrade from VCEM1.2 directly, that means VCEM6.3 can do the upgrade when your VCEM1.2 domain group firmware mode is 2.0x.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:05:23 GMT

Agreed, but then explain the following error as mentioned above from the Upgrade process.

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] Checking if VC Domain Group(s) are running on Firmware version 2.10 or above :

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] Detected Firmware version -- 2.00 VC Domain Group name -- GER_VC_DOMAIN_GROUP

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] Detected Firmware version -- 2.00 VC Domain Group name -- GER_VC_FC_DOMAIN_GROUP

[Thu Dec 01 10:07:40][INFO ] VC Domain Group(s) running on unsupported Firmware version

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:57:11 GMT

that's the reason I suggest you open a HP support case to track down why you get this error. Personally I don't know.

Another option but risky is to try download VCEM6.0 iso to see if you can get any luck because it's a upgrade version after VCEM1.2. However, since your SIM is at 6.3 level now and I have no idea if SIM can let you just upgrade VCEM1.2 to VCEM6.0 alone and then from 6.0 to VCEM6.3.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:23:15 GMT

Where do I get hold of VCEM 1.4 as I think this could possibly fix my problem.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:00:23 GMT

i don't think it's available any more.

if you go

http://www.hp.com/go/vcem

and click download software and login with your HP Passport account, 6.0 is lowest version available.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Gavin_30 — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:19:39 GMT

Hi Hongjun, I think the best will just to remove VC's from VCEM, Scrap VCEM and reinstall 6.3.

That way I dont have to worry about upgrading and might just work out better in the long run.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:04:27 GMT

that may turn out to be the best approach.

You may want to test one VCM to remove and join VCEM so you want monitor MAC/WWN assignment. Just want to make sure that the same MAC/WWN is maintained. it should but just in case. also try to back up your config in case anything goes wrong.

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Tusc — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:39:20 GMT

Any gotchas when upgrading from 6.3 to 6.3.1?

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Hongjun Ma — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:06:48 GMT

not that I'm aware of. it's a updated patch over existing 6.3.

this doc has live capture of 6.3 upgrade to 6.3.1

http://hongjunma.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/virtual-connect-enterprise-managervcem-quick-start-white-paper-is-published-on-hp-com/

Re: VCEM Upgrade

Tusc — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:08:48 GMT

awesome.. thanks man