What’s new in Cisco UCS 2.1(2a)?

A few days ago Cisco released an incremental upgrade to the Cisco UCS Manager firmware, version 2.1(2a). This is more than just a bug fix, and it enables some new hardware, storage enhancements, and operational enhancements. Cisco finally enabled the SD card slot, found on the B200 M3 and other models. No idea why it took them well over a year after blades with SD slots came out to enable it. Spec sheets will no longer have to say ‘future firmware support’. You can find the full release notes here. 17 bugs have also been zapped.

Cisco UCS 2.1(2a) Firmware Enhancements

New hardware features:

•C22-M3L—C22 M3 Server with Large Form Factor HDDs
•C24-M3L—C24 M3 Server with Large Form Factor HDDs
•C24-M3S2—C22 M3 Server with 16-HDD Extender Backplane with Small Form Factor HDDs
•UCS-SD-16G—16GB SD Card
•UCSB-FBWC-1GB—LSI 2208R Embedded; Cache Option Contains Both the Supercap and the 1GB Flash Module
•UCSB-FBWC-SC—Spare for Supercap Module for LSI 2208R
•UCSB-RAID-1GBFM—1GB Flash Module for LSI 2208R
•C240 NEBS Refresh

New Software Features in Release 2.1(2a)

•Storage Enhancements

–Windows 2012 NPIV Support
–Single IQN for iSCSI Boot
–ESX/Linux fNIC Driver Enhancements
–SD Card Enablement Support
–Transportable Flash Module (TFM) Support

•Operational Enhancements

–CIMC Session Management
–Fabric Interconnect High Availability Firmware Auto Synchronization
–VIC PXE Boot Optimization
–M3 Board Programmables Firmware Update
–UCSM GUI Size Optimization
–Nested LDAP Group Support
–UCS Central 1.1 Integration

You can find the full downloads here. Be sure to check out the new 2.1(2) UCS drivers ISO, which has ballooned to a whopping 1.78GB here.