Dell EMC Technical White Paper Dell EMC OMIVV as a Hardware Support Manager for VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager Abstract Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter version 5.1 is enhanced to support the firmware update capabilities of vSphere Lifecycle Manager in vSphere 7.0. This technical white paper illustrates how OMIVV can be used as a Hardware Support Manager to update firmware using vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
Revisions Date Description August 2020 Initial release Acknowledgments This paper was produced by the following: Authors: Vikram KV – Test Senior Engineer, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions Bhimaraju Vadde – Software Principal Engineer, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions Prasanna J – Test Engineer 2, Servers, and Infrastructure Solutions Support: Swapna M, Technical Content Developer 2, Information Development Other: The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc.
Contents Revisions............................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................................... 2 Contents ...................................................................................................................................
Terminology 4 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 Repository Manager RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks NIC Network
Executive summary In vSphere 7.0, VMware enhanced the VMware Update Manager to include capabilities for baselining and remediation of firmware along with Operating System (OS) and add-on components for vSphere 7.0-based clusters and upgraded the feature to vSphere Lifecycle Manager. This technical white paper describes how the existing baselining and remediation capabilities in Dell EMC OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) is enhanced in version 5.
1 Introduction Data center is a complex and sensitive environment. Maintaining the software and firmware running on each of the devices at a standard level becomes crucial in order to achieve uniformity and better manageability. According to their technical and security assessments, data center admins define the standard levels of software and firmware and maintain them at the specified levels. These levels are reviewed periodically and upgraded as needed.
2 Baselining and remediation in OMIVV OMIVV provides an ability to baseline the clusters with respect to a desired state. Baselining in OMIVV is achieved using cluster profile. A cluster profile consists of firmware repository profile, driver repository profile, and system profile, or any combination of these profiles. When a cluster is associated to a cluster profile, all the OMIVV-managed hosts in the corresponding cluster automatically becomes part of the drift detection job. 2.
2.5 Drift detection in OMIVV Configuration drift job runs in OMIVV immediately after the cluster profile is created or modified. Later, the drift detection job also runs for each cluster profile at the scheduled time of each week. When a new host is added to a cluster after the cluster profile is created (and added to host credential profile in OMIVV), the host automatically gets added to the list of hosts for the drift detection process during the next scheduled run of the drift detection job.
3 Baselining using VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager In vSphere 7.0, VMware released a new feature called vSphere Lifecycle Manager. It enables you to create the cluster image and associate it to the cluster within in vCenter. Cluster image can contain the following: Base image—ESXi image and it can be major version or minor version. add-on (Driver Components)—consists of components and theses components should be of higher version than the components present in the base image.
3.1 Register vSphere Lifecycle Manager in OMIVV Before selecting HSM in vSphere Lifecycle Manager image, ensure that you register vSphere Lifecycle Manager in OMIVV. During first-time installation, you can select the Register with vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vCenter 7.0 and later) check box while registering vCenter. Figure 1: vCenter registration If you want to modify the vSphere Lifecycle Manager status, on the vCenter Registration page, select Register or Unregister.
If any vCenter 7.0 and later versions are present under registered vCenter in updated OMVV version, you can register the vSphere Lifecycle Manager by clicking Register in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager column. In case, if you want to unregister vSphere Lifecycle Manager with OMIVV, you can click Unregister in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager column. Figure 3: Unregister vSphere Lifecycle Manager in OMIVV 3.
Once the cluster profile associated with firmware repository, you must associate this cluster profile to the cluster to manage the firmware baseline. In this way, cluster profile becomes HSP for an associated cluster. You can have single cluster profile for multiple clusters. The cluster profiles are called as HSPs in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager context. For more information about cluster profile creation, see OMIVV 5.1 User’s Guide. 3.
3. Select relevant HSP which is relevant for the selected cluster. To identify the HSP associated to the selected cluster, see the description present in the HSP. Figure 5: Select HSP and view description. After you select OMIVV as HSM, all the available HSPs are displayed in the firmware and driver addon section in vSphere Lifecycle Manager image. When you click the HSP, the supported ESXi version is displayed in the Supported ESXi Versions section.
Figure 6: Save image 3.4 Examine drift status and resolution After you save the image, any of the following states is displayed for the host: Compliant: Host is compliant with the image, add-on as and HSP. Non-Compliant: Host is not compliant with at least image, or add-on, or HSP. Unknown: Host might be not reachable. To resolve the issue, ensure that host is in reachable state. If the host is reachable, check whether iDRAC associated to the respective host is reachable or not.
Figure 7: Firmware components drift 3.5 Pre-Check During Pre-Check, OMIVV will check whether all pre-requisites required to remediate firmware are met or not.
Figure 8: Pre-check in progress Figure 9: Pre-check results 3.6 Remediation in vSphere Lifecycle Manager For the firmware remediation, the HSM must be associated to vCenter. HSP selected in the cluster image should be active (Optional).
• Upload firmware components to iDRAC OMIVV uploads all the drifted firmware components from the OMIVV share to iDRAC. If there are any errors, access OMIVV user facing logs. Ensure that the server model present in the cluster is having an entry in the firmware repository catalog that you have selected.
Figure 12: Remediation in progress 3.7 vSAN Hardware Compatibility Listing (HCL) If you have enabled vSAN service on cluster, all the servers within the cluster must maintain compatible firmware and driver mappings which are certified by VMware. You can find the certified mappings in VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG). For more information about the certified vSAN Hardware compatibility matrices that contains required firmware for specific drivers, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
Figure 13: Hardware Compatibility page 19 Dell EMC OMIVV as a Hardware Support Manager for VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager
4 Common issues when using OMIVV as a Hardware Support Manager Issue 1: “DellEMC OMIVV” is not listed as the HSM (Hardware Support Manager) while creating vSphere Lifecycle Manager image. Figure 14: DellEMC OMIVV not listed as HSM Resolution: Start OMIVV Administration Console, and then register the vCenter for vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
Issue 2: Cluster profile (called as HSP in vSphere Lifecycle Manager) created in OMIVV is not listed in vSphere Lifecycle Manager. Resolution: a. Ensure that firmware repository profile is associated with cluster profile. Figure 16: Associate firmware repository profile b. Ensure that cluster (that you have selected for creating vSphere Lifecycle Manager image) is associated with the cluster profile.
Issue 3: Getting “Host not compatible with the image” error after creating the image. Firmware compliance shows following error: This host is not compatible with the firmware in the “Firmware and Drivers Addon” . Figure 18: Firmware compliance error message Resolution: This error will occur if you select the HSP which is not relevant for the selected cluster.
You can also see the OMIVV Logs section and search the log with description “[Scan Task]” and check the error message. Figure 20: OMIVV logs page Issue 4: Getting host compliance status is unknown, and firmware compliance shows following message: Applicable Bundle not found in cluster profile (). Figure 21: Firmware compliance error message Resolution: Firmware repository profile that is associated with cluster profile does not have firmware for the host present in the cluster.
Issue 5: The cluster is managed using vSphere Lifecycle Manager with HSP. The firmware repository profile that is associated with the cluster profile in OMIVV or HSP version is modified. In this case, if you run the check compliance in vSphere Lifecycle Manager, shows following error: “Unable to find the cluster profile with provided version.
Issue 6: Getting host compliance status is unknown, and firmware compliance shows following message: “The host () is currently not managed by OMIVV.” Figure 24: Firmware compliance error message Resolution: Ensure that the host credential profile is created in OMIVV and inventory ran successfully for the host. Figure 25: Create host credential profile Issue 7: Remediation failed with error “Host reported non-compliance after remediation.
Resetting the iDRAC once and then trying remediation may resolve this issue. Select “Clear iDRAC Jobs and Reset iDRAC” as shown in below figure and try remediation again.
5 Conclusion Since the past several releases, OMIVV has been offering ability to baseline clusters in the vCenter against drivers, firmware and configuration drift, and provides abilities to report the drift with periodical checks and allows users to remediate the drift against the baseline. OMIVV offers this functionality for clusters having any supported ESXi versions starting from ESXi 6.0. With the introduction of vSphere Lifecycle Manager in vCenter 7.
6 Technical Support and Resources Dell.com/support OMIVV product page OMIVV Documentation page VMware Docs YouTube Video: Dell EMC OMIVV as a hardware support manager in vSphere Lifecycle Manager https://www.youtube.
