Release Notes for Cisco UCS Platform Emulator,

Release 4.1(2cPE1)
First Published: 2020-06-15

Release Notes for Cisco UCS Platform Emulator

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is the Cisco UCS Manager application bundled into a virtual machine (VM).
The VM includes software that emulates hardware communications for the Cisco Unified Computing System
(Cisco UCS) hardware that is configured and managed by Cisco UCS Manager. For example, you can use
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator to create and test a supported Cisco UCS configuration, or to duplicate an
existing Cisco UCS environment for troubleshooting or development purposes.

About This Document

This document describes system requirements, new features, images information, known caveats and
workarounds for Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, Release 4.1(2cPE1). This document also includes current
information that became available after the technical documentation was published.
Use this release notes as a supplement with the other documents listed in the documentation roadmap
http://www.cisco.com/go/unifiedcomputing/b-series-doc
Make sure to review other available documentation on Cisco.com to obtain current information on Cisco UCS
Platform Emulator.

Revision History
Release Date Description

4.1.2cPE1 June 15, 2020 Created release notes for Cisco

UCS Platform Emulator Release
4.1(2cPE1).

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator Virtual Machine Packaging

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is packaged as a compact virtual machine (VM) with the CentOS open source
Linux distribution. This VM can run a Cisco UCS Manager multichassis, multiblade simulation on a laptop
or desktop computer and does not require an Internet connection. Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is delivered
as a zip file and as an .ova file. The zip file includes the.vmx file. The filename of the zip file includes the

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Virtual Machine Prerequisites

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator release number, such as Cisco_UCS_Platform_Emulator_4.1.2cPE1.zip. The

file size is approximately 2 GB.

Virtual Machine Prerequisites

Before installing Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, install one of the following supported virtual machine (VM)
hypervisors:
• VMware Player 4.0 and above for Microsoft Windows and Linux
• VMware Workstation 7 and above for Microsoft Windows and Linux
• VMware Fusion 4.0 and above for Mac OS X
• VMware vSphere ESXi 4.0 and above
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server
• Java Runtime Environment Version 1.7

New Hardware Features

The following item is the new hardware component:
• Fabric Interconnect(4G-FI-HD) - UCS-FI-64108

New Software Features

This section briefly describes the new features introduced in Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, Release 4.1(2cPE1).
For detailed information about the features listed, see the documents listed in the Related Documentation, on
page 5 section.
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, Release 4.1(2cPE1) includes the following new feature:
• UCSPE: OVA host OS upgraded to Cent OS 6.10(Final). (OVA template OS)

Connections to Intersight
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator does not support connection to Cisco Intersight management to avoid the use
of Intersight resources by emulated devices. Intersight Device Connector has been disabled in the UCS Platform
Emulator, and the device connector menu in the UI is non-functional. You can use Intersight demo environments
in the Cisco demo Cloud: https://dcloud.cisco.com/content/catalogue?search=intersight and Cisco DevNet
https://developer.cisco.com/site/intersight/ to explore the Intersight management of UCS.

Security Fix
The following security issue was fixed in this release:

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Known Limitations

Release Defect ID CVE Description

4.1(2cPE1) CSCvq21997 None UCSPE: [Vulnerability]

Upgraded host OS in
OVA to CentOS
6.10(Final).

Known Limitations
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator has the following limitations:
• UCS C3260 connectivity— Port channel connectivity of UCS C3260 system to fabric interconnect or
fabric extender is not supported.
• Import from a live UCS— While importing a live UCS with UCS C3260 chassis, only one link is
imported from a break out port connectivity.
• Storage Profile— Migration of virtual drives is not supported
• Import from a live UCS— While importing a Live UCS with UCS-FI-6332 or UCS-FI-6332-16UP
fabric interconnect, connections to break out ports of the Fabric Interconnect are not imported.
• Configuring break out ports— Cisco UCS Platform Emulator does not support configuration of break
out ports of UCS-FI-6332 and UCS-FI-6332-16UP Fabric interconnects.
• Export XML— On Google Chrome, the Export XML feature might create a blank dump due to rendering
issues. Use another browser to collect the XML dump.
• Download of stripped-down version of UCS Firmware— Effective with UCS Platform Emulator,
Release 2.2(1bPE1), only the stripped-down version of size less than 50 KB is available for download.
The download of regular (non-stripped version) version is not supported anymore.
• Firmware upgrades—Upgrading firmware for devices manually or using service profiles or Auto-Install
is a beta-feature and may display inconsistent behaviour.
• Recommission and decommission—Recommission and decommission of devices are not supported.
• Domain Name Server (DNS) resolution— DNS resolution is not available for Cisco UCS Platform
Emulator. All domain names must be resolved manually using a static IP address.
• Syslog—Cisco UCS Platform Emulator and Cisco UCS Manager integrated with Cisco UCS Platform
Emulator does not produce a syslog.
• Data path—Cisco UCS Platform Emulator does not emulate network data flow. The software emulates
the functions that are necessary for the management plane.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer—Microsoft Internet Explorer does not support the Cisco UCS Platform
Emulator Model Object Browser and Start-up Inventory features. To use these features, you must use a
Mozilla-compatible browsers such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Internet Explorer Version 8.0
and later supports other Cisco UCS Platform Emulator features.
• Cut-through interfaces—Cut-through interfaces to equipment such as IPMI and SNMP, are not supported.
Servers in a Cisco UCS domain contain integrated management controllers (CIMCs), each of which
supports an IPMI interface. The fabric interconnect components of Cisco UCS support an SNMP interface.
However, because both fabric interconnects and CIMC are considered to be endpoints of the Cisco UCS

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Open Caveats

management system, these interfaces are cut-through interfaces that bypass Cisco UCS Manager, the
central management system.
• Serial over LAN, FTP, TFTP, Telnet— Similarly to SNMP and IPMI interfaces, serial over LAN,
TFTP, FTP, and Telnet access (through user-facing or management-plane-facing Ethernet interfaces) is
not available because they bypass the management software and are considered cut-through access. SSH
is supported only to the Cisco UCS Platform Emulator management IP through the config user for Cisco
UCS Manager CLI access.
• Keyboard/Video/Mouse (KVM)— KVM is a cut-through interface. Cisco UCS Platform Emulator
does not support KVM because there are no physical servers attached to the emulation system to which
KVM could connect. Launching the KVM console does not display an error message.
• Emulation of high-availability failover— No failover scenario is supported. If one management process
dies, the other does not take over.
• AA-based authentication (LDAP, RADIUS, TACACs)— In emulation mode, Cisco UCS Manager
accepts security configuration changes, but does not enforce local or remote password authentication.
Any username and password combination can successfully log in to the Cisco UCS Manager GUI with
administrator privileges. If a local user is created with a role and locale, Cisco UCS Platform Emulator
enforces role, privilege, and locale definitions for the user logging in, allowing an end user to test how
roles, privileges, and locales function in Cisco UCS Manager.
• Remote monitoring (SNMP, Syslog, Call Home, Smart Call Home)—Cisco UCS Platform Emulator
does not support remote monitoring of Cisco UCS Manager on any interface except the Cisco UCS
Manager XML API. You can configure SNMP (traps or gets), local or remote syslog, Call Home, and
Smart Call Home remote monitoring in Cisco UCS Platform Emulator but you cannot send or query data
through those interfaces.
• Cisco UCS Manager database backup and restore—Cisco UCS Platform Emulator does not support
full- state back up or restore configurations from within Cisco UCS Manager. If a user imports a system
backup which consists of switch configurations such as VLAN, CallHome, and so on, the import operation
fails.
• Capability catalog—Cisco UCS Platform Emulator does not support updating the capability catalog in
Cisco UCS Manager. Cisco UCS Platform Emulator supports only the original capability catalog.

Open Caveats
This section lists the open caveats.

Bug ID Symptom Workaround

CSCvb43848 Occasionally, disks and DIMMs of chassis Add the components manually.
and racks are not imported.
CSCva87412 Association of a service profile to Reinsert the server.
UCSC-C3K-M4SRB/UCSC-C3X60-SVRNB
fails with an error message:
Another UCSM operation on the
adapter 0/0/0 is in progress.

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Related Documentation

CSCuy38172 Firmware for server BIOS and CIMC may None.

fail to upgrade.
CSCva35700 Fans are not displayed in the Cisco UCS None.
Manager for rack servers and modular
servers.
CSCuy69146 While configuring the second level boot None.
order, an error message - version not
supported, is displayed.
CSCuy69171 While configuring the virtual media for a None.
server, an error message - version not
supported, is displayed.
CSCuy89163 While UCSB-EX-M4-1/2 servers are being Remove the chassis and reinsert in
discovered, an error message - slot Cisco UCS Platform Emulator.
resolution, is occasionally displayed.
CSCuz17266 Fans of the fabric interconnects on the fabric None.
interconnect focus page do not match the
configuration from a Live UCS.

Related Documentation
For more information, you can access related documents from the following link:
Cisco UCS Documentation Roadmap

System Requirements
The management client must meet or exceed the following minimum system requirements:
• HTML 5 supported web browsers:
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher
• Mozilla Firefox 45 or higher
• Google Chrome 57 or higher
• Apple Safari version 9 or higher
• Opera version 35 or higher

• Microsoft Windows 7, Apple Mac OS X v10.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 or higher operating systems.

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

For information on obtaining documentation, using the Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST), submitting a service
request, and gathering additional information, see What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation at:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html

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 Release Notes for Cisco UCS Platform Emulator
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

Subscribe to What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation, which lists all new and revised Cisco technical
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This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the "Related Documentation" section.
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