From time to time every admin must do BIOS upgrade on the hosts. It may be vendor recommendation, security issue and so on. With Nutanix you can use One-Click upgrade to do BIOS upgrades. Before you start, would be nice to know what clusters needs BIOS upgrade. With Nutanix, using simple “oneliner” you can get all info very quickly.
Nutanix cluster with AHV
On Linux systems (AHV is Linux KVM based hypervisor) demidecode -t bios is the command to retrieve BIOS information without going into IPMI or rebooting host. In my example, I will leverage allssh command available on every CVM in the cluster.
Log in to CVM over SSH and run command ssh root@192.168.5.1 dmidecode -t bios | grep 'BIOS Information' -A3
We will log in from CVM to CVM’s local Nutanix AHV host over local IP address (192.168.5.1) and get info from demidecode command.
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.56:~$ ssh root@192.168.5.1 dmidecode -t bios | grep 'BIOS Information' -A3
FIPS mode initialized
Nutanix AHV
BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 1.0b
Release Date: 05/21/2015 G4-1.2
nutanix@NTNX--A-CVM:10.4.91.56:~$
Now, let’s run same command but with allssh. As you can see, command was executed on every node in the cluster.
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.56:~$ allssh "ssh root@192.168.5.1 dmidecode -t bios | grep 'BIOS Information' -A3"
Executing ssh root@192.168.5.1 dmidecode -t bios | grep 'BIOS Information' -A3 on the cluster
================== 10.4.91.56 =================
FIPS mode initialized
Nutanix AHV
BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 1.0b
Release Date: 05/21/2015 G4-1.2
Connection to 10.4.91.56 closed.
================== 10.4.91.57 =================
FIPS mode initialized
Nutanix AHV
BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 1.0b
Release Date: 05/21/2015 G4-1.2
Connection to 10.4.91.57 closed.
================== 10.4.91.58 =================
FIPS mode initialized
Nutanix AHV
BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 1.0b
Release Date: 05/21/2015 G4-1.2
Connection to 10.4.91.58 closed.
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.56:~$
Nutanix cluster with VMware ESXi
Get info from single node, run ssh root@192.168.5.1 smbiosDump | grep 'BIOS Info' -A5 from any CVM from the cluster.
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.36:~$ ssh root@192.168.5.1 smbiosDump | grep 'BIOS Info' -A5
FIPS mode initialized
BIOS Info: #0
Size: 0x00018
Vendor: "American Megatrends Inc."
Version: "1.0b"
Date: "05/21/2015 G4-1.2"
Start Address: 0xf0000
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.36:~$
Run the same command but with allssh upfront, will get BIOS info from all ESXi nodes in Nutanix cluster
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.36:~$ allssh " ssh root@192.168.5.1 smbiosDump | grep 'BIOS Info' -A5"
Executing ssh root@192.168.5.1 smbiosDump | grep 'BIOS Info' -A5 on the cluster
================== 10.4.91.36 =================
FIPS mode initialized
BIOS Info: #0
Size: 0x00018
Vendor: "American Megatrends Inc."
Version: "1.0b"
Date: "05/21/2015 G4-1.2"
Start Address: 0xf0000
Connection to 10.4.91.36 closed.
================== 10.4.91.37 =================
FIPS mode initialized
BIOS Info: #0
Size: 0x00018
Vendor: "American Megatrends Inc."
Version: "1.0b"
Date: "05/21/2015 G4-1.2"
Start Address: 0xf0000
Connection to 10.4.91.37 closed.
================== 10.4.91.38 =================
FIPS mode initialized
BIOS Info: #0
Size: 0x00018
Vendor: "American Megatrends Inc."
Version: "1.0b"
Date: "05/21/2015 G4-1.2"
Start Address: 0xf0000
Connection to 10.4.91.38 closed.
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.91.36:~$
Nutanix cluster with Microsoft Hyper-V 2012R2
To get BIOS info for all nodes in Nutanix with Hyper-V, run command allssh winsh wmic bios get smbiosbiosversion from any CVM
nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.88.57:~$ allssh "winsh wmic bios get smbiosbiosversion" Executing winsh wmic bios get smbiosbiosversion on the cluster ================== 10.4.88.57 ================= SMBIOSBIOSVersion 1.0b ================== 10.4.88.58 ================= SMBIOSBIOSVersion 1.0b ================== 10.4.88.59 ================= SMBIOSBIOSVersion 1.0b nutanix@NTNX-A-CVM:10.4.88.57:~$
