Problem with VC 3.01 communication when transitioning OA 3.11 from Active to Standby

[chuckk281]

Lawrence was fighting a customer issue:

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I have a fairly serious problem with the Virtual Connect Manager.  The VC has lost communications with the OA after the OA primary was failed over to the secondary.

The C7000 is running OA version 3.11 with Flex-10 VC Ethernet and Fibre Channel modules, using VC code 3.01 (not 3.10) as per Release Set 2010.07

The enclosure has BL460cG6 blades are running iLO2 ver 2.01 and have the absolute latest BIOS (specifically for the issue with Intel X5650 processors).

The suggestion in the VC manager is to navigate to the “Enclosure Status” page to reestablish OA communications.

However with either the OA primary and secondary IP addresses entered, an error message appears saying “The remote enclosure IP address is already in use”.

Failing the OA from the secondary back to the primary worked one time but in trying to reproduce the problem again, the VC has now lost communications to both OA modules!

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Monty was willing to help:

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When you force the OA in bay 2 to take-over the enclosure, did you check to see what OA #2 reports as the VCMODE status? 

It sounds like OA #2 was not synchronized with OA #1.  If OA #2 is reporting VCMODE=disabled when it is the active OA, then that would explain why VCM cannot establish communication with that OA, but can establish communication with the primary OA.

You can see the OA VCMODE status on the active OA using:

-        OA CLI “show vcmode”

-        Or OA GUI “Enclosure Settings”, “Reset Factory Defaults” screen has Virtual Connect Mode status at the bottom of this screen

-        Or OA CLI “show all”

-        Or OA GUI “Enclosure Settings”, “Configuration Scripts”, select the “Click here to view a script containing the enclosure’s current inventory”.  “SHOW VCMODE” is the next to last command in the SHOW ALL”

If the second OA is reporting VCMODE=disabled when it is the active OA, then you also need to check the firmware version of that OA – I suspect it is also not the same as the first OA, which would explain why the enclosure configuration is not synchronized between the two OA.

Easiest way to correct that situation would be to switch back to the OA that VCM can communicate with and update that OA firmware – you can use the same firmware version currently on that OA.  That OA will first update the second OA, then update itself and resync the enclosure configuration.  You should wait at least five minutes after the firmware update to give the OA a chance to synchronize the configuration to the second OA.  Then you can force the second OA to takeover the enclosure and check that it reports VCMODE=enabled.  VCM should also report that it has OK communication status with the OA.

The OA “SHOW ALL” lists the OA firmware versions, the status of OA redundancy, and the VCMODE status and many more items that help in diagnosing problems.

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We will see if this helps Lawrence. Any other suggestions?

[gpapaiko]

Hi,

I have a similar problem, but we only have on OA.

this is currently showing :"Virtual Connect Mode is currently: Disabled" and I have no idea on how to enable it.

The OA is on version 3.31 -  latest.

Beacuse of this I cannot connect to the VCM and assign any IP address for any ports.

There is no manges at all

Please help.

Thanks George