Dell EMC Technical White Paper Maintaining Hardware Compatibility of vSAN Clusters using Dell EMC OMIVV Abstract Dell EMC Open Manage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) supports driver and firmware updates of vSAN clusters. This technical white paper illustrates how OMIVV can be used to manage vSAN clusters.
Revisions Date Description November 2020 Initial release Acknowledgments This paper was produced by the following: Authors: Kunal Anand – Test Engineer 2, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions R Chandrasekhar – Software Principal Engineer, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions Bhimaraju Vadde – Software Principal Engineer, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions Winston Fernandes – Software Principal Engineer, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions Support: Swapna M, Technical Content Developer 2, Informat
Contents Revisions............................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................................... 2 Contents ...................................................................................................................................
Terminology Terminology Description OMIVV OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter iDRAC Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller HSM Hardware Support Manager HSP Hardware Support Package vSAN Virtual Storage Area Network OS Operating System HCL Hardware Compatibility List OOB Out-of-band CIFS Common Internet File System NFS Network File System BIOS Basic Input/output System FC Fiber Channel DRM Dell EMC Repository Manager RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks NIC Network
Executive summary OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) is designed to streamline the management processes in a data center environment by allowing to use VMware vCenter server to manage full server infrastructure includes both virtual and physical. OMIVV also enables you to set the baselines (desired state) for server configuration, firmware, and driver levels with cluster- aware updates for vSphere and vSAN clusters.
1 Introduction vSAN is an enterprise-class, storage virtualization software that allows you to manage compute and storage with a single platform when combined with vSphere. With vSAN, you can reduce the cost and complexity of traditional storage and take the easiest path to hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid cloud. Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are jointly tested and certified solutions that takes away your effort to build the solutions.
have the recommended combination of firmware and driver versions maintained for the version of vSAN on the cluster. OMIVV can help you to update and maintain vSAN solution up to date with VMware recommended firmware and driver. To use OMIVV as a solution for vSAN firmware and driver update, you should know how to create firmware and driver repository that is compatible with VCG.
2 Custom repositories 2.1 Create custom firmware repository using Dell EMC Repository Manager (DRM) Ensure that you have installed following in your environment: • Dell EMC Repository Manager (DRM). For more information, see Dell EMC Repository Manager. • OMIVV is installed and configured. For more information, see OMIVV 5.2 Install Guide. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Launch VMware Compatibility Guide.
The result is displayed as shown in the screenshot below. 7. Click the component for which you want to download firmware or drivers. For example, the PERC H330 Adapter is selected in the following screenshot. After selecting the component, you will be redirected to the page (as shown in screenshot) where you can see the list of driver and firmware version which are compatible with each other. 8.
9. To download firmware, go to https://www.dell.com/support/, in the Search Support section, search for PowerEdge servers. You can use Service Tag or server model name. You can also use the Browse all products option to navigate to the server page. 10. Search for the component as shown in the following screenshot. If you do not see the firmware as latest, click the older version to see the list of all firmware.
After you have downloaded the firmware, integrate firmware to your existing catalog or repository share. To get the firmware components that are not present in VCG, use the latest online catalog (http://downloads.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.gz). 11. To integrate the firmware to existing catalog or repository share, import the firmware in DRM and create a new repository using the export option.
After the catalog is successfully imported, you will see the imported catalog as shown in the following screenshot. d. To select the downloaded firmware, click IMPORT.
e. Once you have selected the firmware, to import the firmware in existing catalog, click OPEN, and then click IMPORT (as shown in the following screenshots). After the firmware is successfully imported, you can see the imported firmware in the list as shown in the following screenshot.
f. Select the repository to export the new catalog along with firmware to the same location or new location. g. Click EXPORT, and then click BROWSE to select the location. h. After the job is successfully completed, the new catalog created at same location (if you have used the existing location) along with the firmware as below. After the new repository is created you need to create firmware repository profile in OMIVV. OMIVV supports CIFS, NFS, and HTTPS share as firmware repository.
2.2 Create custom driver repository 1. Launch VMware Compatibility Guide. 2. To search the compatible driver and firmware, complete the steps 1–8 listed in the Create custom firmware repository using Dell Repository Manager (DRM) section. 3. After the list of compatible drivers and firmware is listed, expand the + button and it will have the link to that driver. 4. To go to the driver download page, click the link. 5. To download the driver, click DOWNLOAD NOW.
6. Once the driver is downloaded, you need to extract the zip file. The extracted zip file will have three files as shown in the following screenshot. 7. Copy the highlighted file which is the offline bundle to any share. Once you have the offline bundle in share you need to create a repository profile of type driver in OMIVV. OMIVV supports CIFS and NFS share as driver repository. For more information about creating driver repository, see create repository profile.
3 Manage firmware and driver repositories using repository profile 3.1 Repository Profile A repository profile enables you to create and manage driver or firmware repositories. The driver profile is used to update the drivers and the firmware profile is used to update firmware for the vSAN cluster. These profiles can also be associated to Cluster Profile and the profile created is used to baseline the vSAN Cluster.
3. On the Repository Profile page, read the instructions, and then click GET STARTED. 4. On the Profile Name and Description page, enter profile name and description. The description field is optional and limited to 255 characters. 5. Click NEXT. The Profile Settings page is displayed.
6. On the Profile Settings page, select Firmware or Driver. The following are applicable for driver repository profile: Driver repository profile can have a maximum of 10 drivers. If more than 10 drivers are present, OMIVV randomly selects 10 drivers while creating driver repository profile. • Only offline driver bundles (.zip files) are used. • Download and extract the offline driver bundles (.zip files) and save to the shared location by providing the full path of the shared location.
To validate the catalog path and credentials, click BEGIN TEST. To continue creating a repository profile, you must complete this validation process. The test connection results are displayed.
8. Click NEXT. The Synchronize with repository location page is displayed. 9. Click NEXT. The Summary page is displayed that provides the information about the repository profile.
10. Click FINISH. After creating the catalog, it downloads, parses, and the status is displayed on the home page of the repository profile. Successfully parsed repository profiles are available during the cluster profile creation and during the firmware update. 4 Create Cluster Profile OMIVV allows you to maintain single image that comprises of firmware and driver repositories. You can maintain the same firmware and driver versions across the cluster.
6 Remediation of cluster (firmware and/or drivers) Remediation of firmware and driver drifts can be achieved by using the firmware update functionality which is available as cluster action. Right-click cluster and select OMIVV firmware update action. While updating the cluster, you must choose the suitable firmware or driver repositories that are created for the selected cluster (which is selected by you for an update action).
7 Common issues when using OMIVV to create repository profiles Issue: The creation of Driver Profile fails with an error message Resolution: Check the offline bundle in the location. For more information, see Create repository profile. The zip folder obtained from the VCG needs to be extracted to get the offline bundle.
8 Conclusion It is very important for the components of the vSAN cluster to be compliant with VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG) for vSAN. OMIVV has been offering an ability to baseline clusters in the vCenter against drivers, firmware and configuration drift, and provides an ability to report the drift with periodical checks and allows you to remediate the firmware drift against the baseline.
9 Technical Support and Resources Dell.
