Administrator Guide

6. After the upgrade is complete, reboot the host.
7. Configure the Mellanox drivers. Configuring Mellanox Drivers
8. Reconnect the host to vCenter.
9. Exit maintenance mode on the host and start the Fluid Cache guest appliance.
If your Fluid Cache guest for the upgraded node starts without any issues and reconnects on the Cache
Overview page, the upgrade is complete on this node. Make sure that the node that is upgraded shows
up with no disconnected elements or errors on the Cache Overview page before proceeding to the next
node. The reconnect process can take several minutes.
Patching the ESXi Hosts Version
Perform the following steps:
1. Place the ESXi host in maintenance mode.
2. Scan, stage, and remediate the host as you normally would.
3. After the ESXi node is back up, exit maintenance mode and power on the Fluid Cache appliance
guest. Monitor the Cache Overview page (again, not from the node that you are powering on which
might not be up yet) and you should see the node start to connect in the Cache Server Stats area
within 5 minutes.
4. You may see extra replica entries on other nodes after the patched node comes back online. These
replica entries will resolve over time. Verify that the top of the Cache Overview page displays three
active metadata servers and two peer CFM servers online before proceeding. It is safe to vMotion
guests back to the recently rebooted node once the cache server state is normal on the recently
patched node.
If your Fluid Cache guest for the upgraded node starts without error and reconnects on the Cache
Overview page, the upgrade is complete on this node. Make sure that the node that is upgraded shows
up with no disconnected elements or errors on the Cache Overview page before proceeding to the next
node. The reconnect process can take several minutes.
Configuring Mellanox Drivers
ESXi 6.x shipped with Mellanox drivers that are not compatible with Fluid Cache 2.1.0.
Verifying the Mellanox Drivers
To verify if the host is running the correct drivers, perform the following steps:
1. Log in to the host using SSH shell and run the following command:
esxcli network nic list
In the Driver column, the following driver must be listed for Mellanox vminics.
mlx4_en us
2. If the following not compatible drivers are listed, perform the steps provided in the section Installing
the Supported Drivers to install the appropriate driver.
nmlx4_core
nmlx4-en
nmlx4-rdma
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