This post is part 2 of the UCS upgrade guide.  If you use Service Profile Templates in your UCS deployments, use this quick guide to safely upgrade your servers, which is step 4 of the UCS upgrade outlined in an earlier post from Chris Murray of TechShifter.

Current Environment

We currently have one Cisco UCS system with 1 chassis, soon to be 3, filled with B200M2 blades with VMware ESXi 5.1 and 5.5.  In order to safely complete the upgrade process, which is step4, you must do the following on all servers, 1 at a time.

Tasks

1. Go to vCenter and place host in maintenance mode
2. Perform upgrades in UCS
   1. Create a new Host Firmware Package
   2. Create a Clone of the Service Profile Template
   3. Associate the Host Firmware Package with the new Service Profile Template
   4. Bind the Service Profile to the new Template
3. Go to vCenter and exit host from maintenance mode
4. Repeat steps 1 – 3 for every server

Let us start

Place host in maintenance mode

Perform server upgrade in UCS

• Right click on Host Firmware Package and Create a new Host Firmware Package

• You can give this any name you want.  Then choose the appropriate Blade Package from the drop down list.

• Go to Servers, Service Profile Templates, click the Service Profile Template you are currently using and Create a Clone

• Again, choose any name you want

• Here we see that the new Service Profile Template was created

• Click on the Service Profile Template, then Policies, then Firmware Policies.  From the drop down list, choose the Host Firmware Package that we created earlier.  Now, your Service Profile Template is ready to used and is a clone the current template with the exception of the Host Firmware Package.

• Go to Servers, Service Profile and click the server that you put in maintenance mode.  Click Bind to a Template, which is at the bottom of the screen.  It will now ask you if you want to reboot the server.

• Choose the new Service Profile Template that you created earlier from the drop down list

• As you see, it warns you before rebooting the server.  But, since this server is in maintenance mode, we really don’t care.  So, click Yes.

• Go to Equipment, Firmware Management, Firmware Auto Install and get a concise list of components and versions

Exit host from maintenance mode

Do this for every Server/Host and you will safely upgrade all of you servers