Cisco Nexus 1000v manual VEM upgrade to Release 4.2(1) SV1(4)

Note 1: Even though Cisco fully supports VUM based upgrades we generally recommend the CLI for VEM upgrades as it provides more granular control on what gets upgraded when.

Note 2: If you plan on manually upgrading the VEM modules make sure you have disabled VMware Update Manager (VUM) service so that it does not automatically roll back changes we make. Once the vem upgrade is complete we can start it back up.

Step 0 Run a “show mod” to check the status of the modules

switch#  show mod
Mod  Ports  Module-Type                       Model               Status
---  -----  --------------------------------  ------------------  ------------
1    0      Virtual Supervisor Module         Nexus1000V          active *
3    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok
4    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok
5    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok
6    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok

Mod  Sw               Hw
---  ---------------  ------
1    4.0(4)SV1(3b)     0.0
3    4.0(4)SV1(3b)     1.11
4    4.0(4)SV1(3b)     1.11
5    4.0(4)SV1(3b)     1.11
6    4.0(4)SV1(3b)     1.11 

Mod  MAC-Address(es)                         Serial-Num
---  --------------------------------------  ----------
1    00-19-07-6c-5a-a8 to 00-19-07-6c-62-a8  NA
3    02-00-0c-00-03-00 to 02-00-0c-00-03-80  NA
4    02-00-0c-00-04-00 to 02-00-0c-00-04-80  NA
5    02-00-0c-00-05-00 to 02-00-0c-00-05-80  NA
6    02-00-0c-00-06-00 to 02-00-0c-00-06-80  NA

Mod  Server-IP        Server-UUID                           Server-Name
---  ---------------  ------------------------------------  --------------------
1    172.16.165.55    NA                                    NA
3    172.16.165.91    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000e  172.16.165.91
4    172.16.165.92    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000d  172.16.165.92
5    172.16.165.93    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000c  172.16.165.93
6    172.16.165.94    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000b  172.16.165.94
* this terminal session

This is looking good, with one active VSM and multiple VEM modules and all running the same version.

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Cisco Nexus 1000v Standalone VSM upgrade to Release 4.2(1) SV1(4)

Cisco Nexus team released the update to the Nexus 1000v product taking it to release 4.2(1) SV1(4). They did a great job of documenting the entire upgrade process both in docs and in a series of screencasts. Check it out it’s really worth your time.

However one obvious thing that they have missed so far is how to upgrade if your VSM is in standalone mode. Part of the problem is the Upgrade application (GUI) does not support standalone mode and the upgrade document does not address the manual upgrade (CLI) method for standalone VSM.

Here is a quick guide on how to upgrade your standalone VSM from 4.0(4) SV1(3, 3a, or 3b) to 4.2(1) SV1(4).

Before you start make sure you have run the pre-upgrade check script against your 1000v configuration to make sure you don’t run into the 7 configurations that are incompatible with Nexus 4.0.x to 4.2.x code.

Now the actual steps:

Step 0 Do a show mod and make sure you have already upgraded all the VEM modules. Remember this has changed from earlier releases. You HAVE to upgrade the VEM first and VSM second to upgrade to release 4.2(1) SV1(4).

show mod
Mod  Ports  Module-Type                       Model               Status
---  -----  --------------------------------  ------------------  ------------
1    0      Virtual Supervisor Module         Nexus1000V          active *
3    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok
4    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok
5    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok
6    248    Virtual Ethernet Module           NA                  ok

Mod  Sw                Hw
---  ----------------  ------------------------------------------------
1    4.0(4)SV1(3b)      0.0
3    4.2(1)SV1(4)      VMware ESXi 4.1.0 Releasebuild-320137 (2.0)
4    4.2(1)SV1(4)      VMware ESXi 4.1.0 Releasebuild-320137 (2.0)
5    4.2(1)SV1(4)      VMware ESXi 4.1.0 Releasebuild-320137 (2.0)
6    4.2(1)SV1(4)      VMware ESXi 4.1.0 Releasebuild-320137 (2.0)

Mod  MAC-Address(es)                         Serial-Num
---  --------------------------------------  ----------
1    00-19-07-6c-5a-a8 to 00-19-07-6c-62-a8  NA
3    02-00-0c-00-03-00 to 02-00-0c-00-03-80  NA
4    02-00-0c-00-04-00 to 02-00-0c-00-04-80  NA
5    02-00-0c-00-05-00 to 02-00-0c-00-05-80  NA
6    02-00-0c-00-06-00 to 02-00-0c-00-06-80  NA

Mod  Server-IP        Server-UUID                           Server-Name
---  ---------------  ------------------------------------  --------------------
1    172.16.165.55    NA                                    NA
3    172.16.165.91    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000e  172.16.165.91
4    172.16.165.92    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000d  172.16.165.92
5    172.16.165.93    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000c  172.16.165.93
6    172.16.165.94    dcedbaac-1dc0-11df-0000-00000000000b  172.16.165.94

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Slackware Virtual Machine v13.1

I have been meaning to update the linux virtual machine images with newer versions but have been too busy so far, however managed to get a breather at work thanks to the post Holidays slump 🙂 So here is an vm with the latest version of Slackware 64bit v13.1.

Slackware Linux VM Configuration
Distribution: 13.1
Linux Kernel: 2.6.33
Installation Type: Base+X+XFCE
Desktop Environment: XFCE
Networking: DHCP
Root Password: “vmware”

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Consolidating my blogs

After a lot of thinking 🙂 I have decided to merge my two blogs previously at www.vmwhere.net and jayakumar.co.in into a single site/blog here at www.jayakumar.org.

The reason was simple, am lazy and do not want to maintain two sites. Plus after I moved out of VMware late last year I don’t feel the need maintain a separate blog for VMware so as maintain that thin distinction between work (VMware) and personal (linux/networking) stuff. Also since I have joined Cisco I wanted to blog bout Nexus 1000v and Cisco UCS products, but the mere thought of setting up and maintaining another blog kept that idea far. So theoretically I have merged 3 blogs into one.

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All downloads are gone :(

Thanks to a catastrophic failure during migration from a private server to a shared server, all the site downloads are gone 🙁 the blogs posts, comments etc basically everything that was on the database we were able to recover from a db backup, but anything on the filesystem is gone. So all the virtual machine … Read more