NCU 10.20 and 10GbE 6.0.60

[Eric Datwyler]

All,

I just recently installed the HP Network Configuration Utility for Windows Server 2008 R2 10.20 and HP NC-Series Broadcom 10GbE Multifunction Driver for Windows Server 2008 x64 Editions 6.0.60 on a Proliant BL460c server and found that both NICs had a yellow indicator in Device Manager....neither was working. Reboot, remove and re-add, re-install, nothing worked except downgrading to the previous versions (NCU 10.10 and NIC driver 5.2.22). This happened on every BL460c that we have so we stopped our upgrade process. Now, I was able to get the new versions installed if I dissolved the NIC team. Once dissolved, the NICs immediately showed up normal in device manager. Re-created the NIC team and it is working fine.

Has anyone else seen this? Dissolving and recreating the NIC team is not an option when I have 45 of these BL460c servers to upgrade. I upgraded HP NIC drivers and NCU software many a time but never have I seen this. Am I missing something or is there something I need to do before the upgrade? The release notes don't show anything of concern regarding new functionality.

[Ali]

Hi Eric,

this behavior is observed when you upgrade NCU to NCU 10.20 on windows 2008 and windows 2008 with hyper V server.

you may try this registry settings
Simply navigate to ¦

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-1
1CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Find the key (folder) that represents your NIC Team (for example 0012), which you can find by looking for the â  TeamNameâ  value under each key until you find your team.

Create a new String value (REG_SZ) called:
VLANPromiscuous

Set it to 0 (disabled/default) or 1 (enabled).

check the reference thread:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/HP-Network-Config-Util-v10-10-0-0-Crash-after-upgrade-380-G6-on/m-p/4701659#M106544

hope this helps,

Cheers!
Aftab

[Eric Datwyler]

I do not have HyperV installed on the servers having this issue. I did add the VLANPromiscuous registry value and it did not have any effect.

[Eric Datwyler]

Anyone? Anyone? HP? This is concerning since recreating the Team on every one of my servers is not a desirable solution.

[Ali]

Hi Eric,

I was away all this while... unfortunetly I have not updated the latest version on my systemm so can't check your issue.

however, I would share few observations

side scaling and TOE feature in multifucation adapter create lot of problem under windows environment. disable these features under NIC property and check..

I will see if I can test this in my lab... I will let you know.

thanks,
Aftab

[Eric Datwyler]

Thanks, another note......this problem did not happen on the servers that do not have their NICs teamed. This is only isolated to servers with their NICs teamed.

[Ali]

Hi Eric,

Side scaling and TOE features should be disabled from NIC property with in NCU. so try this.

Most probably I will do some testing this weekend and would let you know.

anyone else has experienced the same issue or know this behaviour is welcome to share his/her observations.

thanks,
Aftab

[Eric Datwyler]

Is there any documentation that states side scaling and TOE should be disabled any why? If it should be disabled, why isn't it disabled by default?

[Eric Datwyler]

OK, funny thing. One server does not have the NICs teamed and I can see the TOE and receive-side scaling setting in NCU. However, I do not see these settings when looking at NIC properties in NCU on a server with NICs teamed......only Receive Buffers and Transmit Buffers. So it doesn't even appear that I could disable these if I wanted to.

[Aaron Blosser]

I've been running into this issue too, and driving me nuts.

I've already applied the registry patch (the VLANPromiscuous key) so that I can edit the properties of a team with 10.10, but that doesn't help with the issue of the drivers failing to start properly when I install the 6.0.22 drivers (from my current 5.2.22.0)

It does this whether my NICs are teamed or not. It doesn't even let me roll back the driver, so I've had to remove the network cards from device manager, reboot, reinstall the NIC drivers, and then they show up. By this point I've lost my existing NIC team settings so I have to re-create that and reconfigure the IP settings.

It's a pain, especially if you have a lot of servers. For now I'm just skipping this on the rest of my systems and hoping the installer will do a better job. Obviously something is getting missed when doing an update, whereas removing the drivers and doing a fresh install seems to work.