BL460c g8 554FLB FlexLOM does not show the correct number of ports

[markzz]

I'm in the process of installing a new C7000 series blade infrastructure.

For those that are far wiser than I with this infrastructure I must state although I've worked with HP DL series servers for 15+ years I'm very fresh to the Blade environments..

Overall the concepts seem quite clear and structured but I appear to have a very odd issue where the blades are seeing varying numbers of port from the 554FLB FlexLOM..

The c7000 g3 chassis has 2x10Gb/24 port interconnect modules installed in bays 1 and 2.

Viewing the blades through bios.

Blade 1 can see 8 FlexLOM ports (Which is what I expected as there are 8 available paths)

Blade 2 can see 6 FlexLOM ports

Blade 3 can see 4 FlexLOM ports

Blade 6 can see 6 FlexLOM ports

There are in fact 16 blades but I've been working primarily with blade 1 setting it up via OneView and then using it to create a template which I applied to blades 2 and 3..

Blade 6 was just a quick test to see what it could see.

I then thought this must be an issue with OneView so I remove the Chassis from OneView and went back to configuring via Virtual Connect..

Even though I have setup each blade with the same configuration (regarding NIC's and FC ports) I still see differing numbers of ports in bios and in the running OS. (Being ESXi 5.5u1)

I have a call logged with HP on this and the only vague suggested so far is to downgrade the bios of the flexlom to 4.1.xxxxx then upgrade again to 4.9.xxxx.25.

I have done this on blades 1 and 2 but the number of available ports remains the same.

I've also reset blade 2 to factory defaults but again no change..

I have not done a system erase as I was concerned about the SAN storage being deleted..

Any suggestions for the forum would be most welcome.

Thank you all.

updated with interconnect details

[LouisH]

what do you see when viewing the blades from the OA GUI ( selecting Device bays on left, highlighting each one and in middle window, selecting configuration tab)?

Virtual Connect needs a profile applied to each blade before you can really compare blades....

Each network connection needs to be created within VCM. VCM will only present two connections by default, for  each profile. (add network button).

Are these Gen 8? ....and is each "personality" module the same?

Regards,

Louis

[LouisH]

Sorry....just saw you specified the Blades were Gen 8.

[markzz]

I've attached a word doc with a couple of screen shots.

These screen shots are from blade1.

Pic 1 is from AO which I'm currently working in.

Pic 2 is the blades bios.

the server profile for all blades is the same (as it was previously in OneView) yet I see a varying number of FlexLOM interfaces on different blades.

[msh_it]

hi

May I suggest you delete the profile from bay 2 for example, and create a new one from VCM, add 6x NICs and 2x FCoE. power up the server then wait till the profile is applied. then check the status, if it worked fine try to dublicate it and test.

BTW, what VC FW and OA FW are you running, are all the blades on the same SPP level?

[markzz · Accepted solution]

Quite poor of me to have never gotten back to this post with the solution..

YES there is a solution.

This issue is caused by dogy LOM bios..

Delete the Blades profile..

Loginto the blade via ILO. Open an ILO console to the blade..

From the ILO console Attached firmware iso "OneConnect-Flash-4.1.450.1707.iso".

Boot the blade and apply the firmware.

Power off the blade.

From the ILO console Attached firmware iso "OneConnect-Flash-4.9.416.0.iso". (very important you use this version)

Boot the blade and apply the firmware.

Power off the blade.

Create the a new server profile in OneView .

Boot the blade and install your OS.. like normal.