I recently experienced a Pink Screen of Death on a UCS C260-M2 running 1.5.7(c) of the Cisco BIOS package. I opened a Cisco TAC case and they had me do the following command:
ethtool -i vmnic1
with the following results
driver: igb
version: 2.1.11.1
firmware-version: 1.6-3
bus-info: 0000:03:00.0
They then told me I needed to update the NIC drivers with the following package:
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXi5X-INTEL-igb-4017&productId=285
The drivers listed here are v4.1.17 dated 12/10/2012.
If you run the UCS Compatibility tool it says:
Manufacturer = Intel
Adapter Driver = 5.0.5.1
Adapter Firmware = 1.6-3
Boot Code / BIOS = v1.5.43(PXE)/2.8.30(iSCSI)
I can only presume that they are seeing the 2.1.11.1 and thinking it needs to be 5.0.5.1 however I'm a little leary of just installing this package for several reasons:
1) The drivers they want me to install are dated 12/10/2012 and ESXi v5.1 U2 was released 09/08/2014. It seems unlikely to me that VMware would release an update with drivers that were older than 2 years.
2) The versions of everything don't really sync up:
a) The drivers they want me to use are a 3 value versioning while the drivers they supposedly are updating and are required are using a 4 value versioning system.
b) The command that was specified seems to indicate a virtual NIC, not a physical NIC.
c) The version supposedly required doesn't sync up with the version they linked me to.
My questions are:
1) Am I being unreasonable or does it seem like doing this patch is a bad idea?
2) Can I back out this change and how?
3) Am I missing something that would make what Cisco is asking me to do make sense?