There was me: I confess! Last night I endured a long battle with our content management system to remove seven pilot discs from the Citrix Knowledge Center for XenServer 5.6 SP2, 6.0, and 6.0.2.
A Little Background
The eagle eyes of you, especially if you follow the RSS feed for patches to XenServer, have noticed a driver update ( "driver disk") for be2net (Ethernet) and lpfc Emulex (FCoE) pilots appear on our site the web 24 July. Because we need to release a version of the driver disk for each kernel update we do (and for each version of XenServer), no fewer than seven "flavors" of the driver disc were released at the same time .
The drivers updates address several issues that customers reported to us, and we have been working with Emulex to face.
Great! So why did they leave?
Emulex hardware, like many other devices running firmware that can be updated by the user. As part of the changes necessary for drivers, firmware modifications were also made. Therefore, customers need to upgrade both drivers and re-flash the firmware.
The sticking point was then the documentation for the drivers disk specified as an update of the firmware version was required , this version was not yet available on the Emulex website.
So we were faced with the situation that we either tell you to update your drivers and firmware (which you would not be able to do), or people might try to update only the drivers themselves (which could cause compatibility problems: this combination has not, to my knowledge, been tested)
OK. ... So when can I get the drivers?
the good news is that Emulex are working to release the firmware on their website as soon as possible. Once done, we will update link articles to it, and re-post. I hope it will be next week.
I've installed the drivers!
Do not panic. Contact Citrix Support for help installing the drivers back that you used previously :. This effectively involves using the rpm utility to uninstall the driver disk RPM
The other option is to wait until it compatible firmware is released by Emulex and install it too. As mentioned above, I can not recommend that, just because it is not a combination tested. You can choose to run that anyway, if it is less painful than the old drivers back on all your servers.
[N.B. Just for the avoidance of doubt, the documentation is/was clear on the need for a firmware upgrade to use these drivers. I’m providing this section just in case people were overeager in deploying the update ;-). ]
I think I have a problem with the Emulex driver
customers who have questions should raise them to Citrix support as usual. When we (re-) liberate the driver disks, they will come with a list of problems that have been solved
Finally ...
I apologize to everyone for confusion caused :. We hope you'll agree that I made the right decision. Given the time it took me to complete, I hope so!
Updates (August 10)
- I am in daily contact with Emulex on that date to accommodate the firmware is: apologies to all those waiting for she! I have no ETA guarantee, however.
- If you are looking to use these driver updates (when they are published!) With IBM (or other OEM ") firmware, please make sure that you use the version of firmware qualified by your OEM. Any variant of 4.1.xx firmware is supported with the new drivers (but you need to upgrade to firmware version 4.1.xx).
- We recently published the XS602E007 fix for XenServer 6.0.2 and as part of that we re-released some Emulex drivers we published previously for XenServer 6.0.2 in March. These drivers are therefore nothing "new", but if you deploy the hotfix, you will need this driver disc.
Update (15th August)
Emulex has released updated firmware, and Citrix have now (re) released the driver disks for different versions of XenServer. You can find the Emulex driver disk for XenServer 6.0.2 about support.citrix.com.
Fortunately, all's well that ends well, but again apologize for the long wait!
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