Hardware Compatibility says "Incompatible" yet it works

[jscooper22]

Hi,

I'm running v7.0U3 with two esxi HPE ProLiant hosts, each running a handful (5-6) of VMs. I'm looking to remediate to bring one of my hosts up to be in compliance. I'm still not sure how the build #s relate to U3C,D, E, I, SI, etc but that may be irrelevant at this point.

I ran the hardware compatibility test and one says all the NICs are incompatible with 7.0U3, which they can't be since they work. I'm just worried that installing the baseline WILL break them so I'm wondering if there's a page of how to read these reports and what I should update (if anything) before installing this.

Thanks,

Jeff

[Kinnison]

Hi,

This is a good question,

Assuming that the "incompatible" network cards are products marketed by the system manufacturer, in my opinion it would be appropriate to contact him to request further clarification on the matter. If, on the other hand, these are options produced by other third parties and procured in a later moment then can be a different story, those network cards may not be in HCL and nevertheless work without highlighting particular problems.

There are many cases, especially in the context of so-called "homelabs" where components not present in HCL are used but which work (usually) without any kind of problem.
In general, in the face of a substantial update, from my point of view, it is always advisable to apply the most recent updates relating to the system firmware and the devices installed in it.

Regards,
Ferdinando

[StephenMoll]

My perception is the HCL is a more-or-less manually updated data set.

It can/does contains errors, anomalies and inconsistencies.

So in general:

Where something is listed as supported or compatible it is described as such because someone has actually tried this combination and added this information to the HCL.

Where something is listed as unsupported or incompatible, it is often simply because it has not been proven to be supported or compatible, not that it is actually incompatible. Its like the fail safe option.

The problem is that you cannot easily tell what components listed as incompatible are defined as such as testing has shown this, from those that just haven't been tested at all.

So in simple terms : If the HCL says something is 'compatible' it will work, if it says 'incompatible', it 'might' work.

[jscooper22]

I suppose the question then is: would applying a minor esxi update cause an otherwise (even unofficially) working device to stop working.

My 2 cents says no; it's probably ok. But I would feel much better if anyone running a DL380 Gen10 with an i350 NIC and the latest release of esxi chimed in.

Also, it looks like they just made ESXi70U3j-21053776 available a couple days ago, so there's an even newer release out.

Now I need to unravel HPE's oh so simple update tools...

Thanks,

Jeff

[StephenMoll]

If you do a filter on the VMware Compatibility Guide as follows:

What are you looking for: Set to IO devices.

On the right hand side set VID, DID, SVID and Max SSID to the values shown in your screen shot for your device.

Update and View Results and you'll be left with two entries.

One posted by HP and one by Intel Corp.

The HP one doesn't look like it has been updated since vSphere 6.7.

Intel's entry says the "HP Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 366T adapter" is compatible with ESXi release from 6.5 through to 8.0.

Skyline Health uses the same data, and probably uses HP's entry rather than Intel's for determining the result.

[jscooper22]

OK! Getting closer:

From my console, I ran 

esxcli network nic get -n vmnic5

and got

   Driver Info: 
         Bus Info: 0000:11:00:3
         Driver: igbn
         Firmware Version: 1.63.0:0x80001146:1.3089.0
         Version: 1.5.2.0

So I'm apparently running driver 1.5.2. It's not listed on either matrix. Do drivers get updated as part of remediation, or should I install the latest driver (1.10.2.0) manually beforehand? Originally, this was installed using a custom image that had all the drivers for the HP  equipment. This was my first ESXI server and when I first did it I thought "how nice, vmware and HPE are in sync with each other to make installers available." Maybe that was just for the initial install and updates are a bit more messy.

HP has updates as well (which is how all this started), but things are even more baffling over there. 

Thanks again for all the help!

Jeff

[StephenMoll]

Sorry I have very rarely done an update to an install in order to get an updated driver installed. I believe you can use update manager to do this. Uploading the driver bundle to vCenter and creating a host profile and remediating as you suggest. Our modus operandi for updating hosts is to reinstall from a newer custom ISO from the hardware supplier.

Only once did we have to create our own custom ISO (Using vCenter Image Builder) to get the required network driver in place, pending our transition to vSphere 7, where the correct driver was already built in.

[jscooper22]

In the end I just ran the update to 2.78 through iLO and it worked fine.

There are still some components that have older firmware, but I regularly see contrary advice, some saying "update firmware" other saying :"don't unless there's a problem."

The closest thing to a problem I have is that the fans ramp up for a few seconds at about 7:15am every day. I yet to find, though, if this is a problem or it's by design. Nothing in the logs about it, so I'm leaving it for now. 

Thanks!

Jeff

[StephenMoll]

I wonder if that is some sort of self-test, and something is blipping the fan throttle and checking that RPM sensors change accordingly?