Mellanox adapters MAC Address corruption after PXE network start - IBM Flex Systems

Resolving The Problem

Source

RETAIN tip: H211029

Symptom

The Media Access Control (MAC) address of the listed adapters becomes corrupted when the system is net booted.

The visible effect of the corruption is that one or more digits in the MAC address are converted to zeros.

Affected configurations

The system can be any of the following IBM servers:

• Flex System x220 Compute Node, type 7906, any model
• Flex System x240 Compute Node, type 8737, any model
• Flex System x440 Compute Node, type 7917, any model

The system is configured with one or more of the following IBM options:

• Flex System EN4132 Dual-Port 10 Gb Ethernet Adapter, option part number 90Y3466, any replacement part number
• Flex System EN6132 Dual-Port 40 Gb Ethernet Adapter, option part number 90Y3482, any replacement part number

This tip is not software specific.

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) device driver for the Mellanox 10 Gb Ethernet and Mellanox 40 Gb Ethernet for IBM Flex Systems is affected.

The system has the symptom described above.

Solution

This behavior is fixed in the following firmware/driver packages:

• For Microsoft Windows 2008: mlnx_fw_nic_4.60.17738p2_win2k8_32-64
• For Microsoft Windows 2012: mlnx_fw_nic_4.61.50000p4_win2k12r2_32-64
• For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5: mlnx_fw_nic_1.5.3-4.0.42.18_rhel5_x86-64
• For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6: mlnx_fw_nic_2.1-1.0.6.2_rhel6_x86-64
• For Linux SLES 10: mlnx_fw_nic_1.5.3-4.0.42.18_sles10_x86-64
  
• For Linux SLES 11: mlnx_fw_nic_2.1-1.0.6.2_sles11_x86-64
• For VMware 4: mlnx_drv_nic_1.5.7_vmwesx4_x86-64
• For VMware 5: mlnx_drv_nic_1.9.9.0_vmware_x86-64

The file is available by selecting the appropriate Product Group, type of System, Product name, Product machine type, and Operating system on IBM Support's Fix Central web page, at the following URL:

http://www.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/

Workaround

AC power cycle the Flex Information Technology Element (ITE). This can be accomplished either through manually removing and reinserting the Flex ITE into the chassis, or by using the virtual reseat capability from the chassis' Flex Chassis Management Module (CMM), as described in the IBM Flex System CMM Web interface options document at:

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/flexsys/information/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.acc.cmm.doc%2Fcmm_ui_service_and_support.html

Additional information

Note that the MAC address is not actually changed on the adapter.

The issue has not been observed to occur in consecutive resets.