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Chris Hall

Principal Technical Consultant

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Chris Hall Nutanix Certified Master - Multicloud Infrastructure 6 Chris Hall VMware vExpert 2024 Chris Hall VMware vExpert NSX 2023 Chris Hall Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure 6 Chris Hall Nutanix Certified Professional - Unified Storage 6 Chris Hall VMware vExpert 2023 Chris Hall VMware vExpert 2022

UCS Blade Discovery Failed

Lost n Found
A simple job then; lift and shift some Cisco UCS blades from a legacy site to into the Datacentre to help with capacity for consolidation in the Datacentre.

Unfortunately a simple job turned into a bit of a nightmare with the destination UCS deciding not to play nicely with the recycled blades. Don’t get me wrong here folks, Cisco Unified Computing System is a cool piece of kit that is challenging the way we look at hardware nowadays. It is however not without it’s foibles of which this is just one.

Thanks go to @brettchannon and the guys at @VCE for helping with the solution to this issue.

Overview

Symtoms

When you install a Cisco UCS blade that is has 1.x firmware installed into a chassis that is running a 2.x firmware, the following error can be seen: error

Code: F1000034 Cause: fsm-failed Description: [FSM:FAILED] Blade Discovery (FSM:sam:dme:ComputeBladeDiscover)

A re-acknowledge, power cycle, reseat will not allow the blade to be properly discovered. Any firmware upgrades (other than a CIMC firmware upgrade) will remain in a “Scheduled” status.

Cause

USB Legacy mode is set to disabled within the BIOS settings.

Resolution

Complete the following resolution on each blade affected:

  1. Open the KVM console of the affected blade (Equipment Tab > Chassis > Chassis containing affected blade > Servers > Affected Server > KVM Console): reset

  2. Hit Reset and OK the following warning: reset OK 1

  3. Choose Power Cycle and OK the following dialogue: reset OK 2

  4. Hit F2 when prompted to enter the blade’s BIOS setup: F2

  5. Once in the BIOS setup hit right arrow key to get to Advanced and down arrow to USB Configuration: M200 bios

  6. Hit return to open USB configuration and hit down arrow and return to open Legacy USB Support option: USB Disabled

  7. Set Legacy USB Support to Enabled: Enable USB

  8. Hit Esc and right arrow to select Exit tab and hit return to Save Changes and Exit: M200bios 4

  9. Close the KVM console and allow UCS to rediscover server. If you cannot wait, select Recover Server > Re-acknowledge > OK to force the UCS to rediscover the blade.

More Information

I would love to know more about this error and how the USB mode setting within a blade can cause UCS to give up on a that blade altogether.

Seems like a crazy simple fix to what - on the face of it - seems a pretty catastrophic error message. All in all we had this issue on 12+ blades and the USB legacy mode fix work on all of them.

Godda love UCS…..!

-Chris