Release Notes: Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange Release 2.1.0.0 (Windows)

These Release Notes (updated 8:25 AM EST on 4/22/2025) are for Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange Release 2.1.0.0. See the following sections:

• New Features and Enhancements

• Bug Fixes

• Important Considerations

• Known Issues

• Accessing Stratus Knowledge Base Articles

• Getting Help

New Features and Enhancements

Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange Release 2.1.0.0 introduces support for configuring the Hyper-V role on your system. See Configuring the Hyper-V Role on Your System for more information.

Bug Fixes

Do Not Burn Firmware on Active Compute Module During Windows Installation

During the Windows installation, you encounter prompts asking you to update the BMC and BIOS firmware on the active compute module. However, updating the BMC and BIOS firmware during the installation may cause the installation to fail. To allow the firmware to be updated post-installation, answer No to both prompts.

After the installation, if the ztC Endurance console​ displays an alert stating that the updates require a reboot exchange, log in to the Windows Administrator account and run the following commands:

This issue has been fixed in Release 2.1.0.0.

Recovering Degraded Data Disks After Installation

In the previous release, deporting disks under certain circumstances resulted in formerly duplexed data LUNs splitting into two identical simplexed (degraded) data LUNs, each with identical data and limited functionality. Manual restoration of the data LUNs was required in these cases.

This issue has been fixed in Release 2.1.0.0.

Important Considerations

Use Only Clean Replacement Boot Disks

Do not insert boot disks that contain stale data in a ztC Endurance system.

If you do add a previously-used disk to your system, use one of the following commands to remove all data, including metadata, from the disk:

• From the Windows host, run the rdmadm clean_disk command (see Managing Mirrored Storage Using the Rapid Disk Mirroring Administrator).

• From the Standby OS (Ubuntu), run the following command: sudo nvme format -s1 -f /dev/nvme1n1.

Otherwise, the result may be unpredictable depending on the existing data. For example, if the existing data was an OS image, the system may attempt to boot from the previously-used disk instead of from the intended disk.

Upgrading to Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange Release 2.1.0.0

To upgrade the system software from Release 2.0.x.x to 2.1.x.x, follow the instructions in Upgrading the System Software.

Do Not Update the Ubuntu System Software

Do not enable Ubuntu unattended upgrades or update the Ubuntu system software of the Standby OS from any source other than Stratus unless instructed to do so. To prevent incompatibilities and ensure the proper fault-tolerant operation of your system, use only the release and software packages that are installed with the Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange software. All supported Ubuntu package updates will be bundled in future releases.

Do Not Change BIOS Settings

Do not change any BIOS settings from their default settings without first being told to do so by Stratus Customer Service.

Known Issues

Do Not Use BIOS to Disable Wake On LAN

Setting Wake On LAN to Disabled in the BIOS does not disable this functionality. Instead, use the Windows settings documented in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/setup-upgrade-and-drivers/wake-on-lan-feature to disable Wake On LAN.

Long Network Delays with PCIe Adapter During I/O Faults

Adding a PCIe adapter to a team configured in static-teaming mode could result in long network delays when an I/O module is being brought up.

Install ASNConnect After You Replace a Compute Module

If you replace a compute module, you must contact your authorized Stratus service representative (see Getting Help) so they can remove the ASNConnect software associated with the old compute module. After that, you can install ASNConnect on the new compute module as described in Enabling ASNConnect .

System Reports a PSU Error When Power State Changes From No Power to Powered On

When a ztC Endurance system goes from a state of no power to power, the ztC Endurance console​ may report that one or both PSUs have failed. Some examples of when this situation can occur are during the initial power-on, or if you remove both power cords from the system, reconnect them, and boot the system. As long as both PSU LEDs are solid green, you can address the issue at a convenient time. However, if the PSU LEDs are solid amber or blinking amber, there may be a legitimate problem with the PSUs that requires prompt attention.

If you encounter this issue:

• If you can physically access the ztC Endurance system:

  1. Check the PSU LED status. Both PSU LEDs should be solid green, indicating that the PSUs are okay. See Figure 29 and Table 12.

  2. Remove the power cord from the PSU that the ztC Endurance console​ reported as failed. See Figure 46.

  3. Wait for the LED on the affected PSU to completely turn off. See Figure 29.

  4. Reconnect the power cord. See Connecting the System to Electrical Power.

• If the system is remote and you cannot physically access it, contact Stratus Customer Service for assistance.

IPv6 Must Be Enabled in BMC Web Console

ztC Endurance systems are shipped with the Enable IPv6 setting selected in the BMC Web console. The ztC Endurance system does not work if you disable this setting.

The Enable IPv6 setting is located in Settings>Network Settings>Network IP Settings. When you select this setting, the Enable IPv6 DHCP setting appears; select this setting as well. For more information about the BMC Web console, see Overview of the BMC Web Console.

Reconfiguring System from Static IPv6 Addresses to Dynamic IPv4 Addresses

If your ztC Endurance system has been configured with static IPv6 addresses and you are reconfiguring the system to use dynamic (DHCP) IPv4 addresses, perform the following procedure before running net_config.sh:

1. Log in to one of the BMC Web consoles.

2. Select Settings, then select Network Settings, and then select Network IP Settings.

3. On the Network IP Settings page:

   1. Select the Enable IPv6 DHCP check box.

   2. Enter 0 in the IPv6 Address field.

   3. Click Save and exit the BMC Web console.

Repeat this procedure on the other BMC Web console.

Enter Only One DNS Server During Installation

If you try to enter more than one name server for the Standby OS or Windows host in the installation configuration file (zen_config.yaml) or when prompted in the installation script, the script will not proceed until you enter only one name server. If needed, you can add a second name server after installation by using standard Windows management utilities.

For the Standby OS specifically, if you earlier added one or more additional name servers and then you replace a compute module or upgrade the system software, you must manually add the additional name server(s) back to the Standby OS. You must do this because those operations reinstall the Standby OS, and any configuration operations outside those specified by the ztC Endurance installation are lost during the reinstallation.

Reporting Error in zenverify Program

After a ztC Endurance system is installed, you verify the system's installation by running the zenverify program from a standby compute module. Currently, if the compute module's complex programmable logic device (CPLD) version is 1.2.0, zenverify reports a failure of the CPLD firmware version. This is a reporting error, not an actual failure; Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange Release 2.1.0.0 supports both the 1.2.0 and 1.4.0 versions of the compute module's CPLD. You can safely ignore this error.

Windows Subsystem for Linux Not Supported

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is not supported on ztC Endurance systems running AUL-Smart Exchange for Windows.

Do Not Install OpenSSH Server Optional Feature

During the Windows installation or upgrade, do not use the OpenSSH server feature from the Settings > Apps > Apps & features > Optional features menu. The installation or upgrade uses a different OpenSSH application. If you try to use the OpenSSH server feature along with the OpenSSH application, you receive no warning, but neither the feature nor the application works.

Installation Fails If System Connected to External Storage

Any external storage should be disconnected from the ztC Endurance system before you start Windows installation or upgrade. If Windows Setup fails with the message Windows could not apply the unattend answer file's <DiskConfiguration> setting., immediately disconnect external storage and click OK. If the message disappears before you can do this, start the installation or upgrade again, first making sure that external storage is disconnected.

Disk Manager May Display Incorrect Number of Disks During Installation

During the system software installation, before the first Smart Exchange​ occurs, Windows Disk Management may display an incorrect number of removable disks or CD-ROM drives, each with a drive letter assigned to it. To correct this display error, close the BMC KVM session to the Windows host.

Do Not Install Windows Updates Before You Check with Stratus Customer Service

When the Windows installation or upgrade completes, Windows Update is automatically disabled. Do not attempt to install any Windows updates without first checking with Stratus Customer Service.

Do Not Modify Time Zone Except for Windows Host

Other than in the Windows host, do not modify the time zone on your ztC Endurance system. For example, do not attempt to modify the time zone on the Standby OS or in the BIOS.

Recovering Storage Pool After Reinstalling Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange​

If you use Storage Spaces on your ztC Endurance system and need to reinstall Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange​, check the state of your storage pool in Server Manager. If it is in an unknown, unhealthy state, perform the following procedure:

1. From Server Manager, right-click on the unknown/unhealthy storage pool. Select Set Read-Write Access.

2. Right-click each virtual disk and select Attach Virtual Disk. Click Yes.
   

3. Open Disk Management. After you attached the virtual disks in the previous step, the disks now appear as Offline. Right-click each disk and select Online. (Note that the letter assigned to the disk is not the same as the one originally assigned to the disk, but you can change it.) The virtual disk now appears as Detached.

4. Use Windows PowerShell to set the IsManualAttach value to false as follows:

   PS C:\Users\Administrator> Set-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName Pool1-vdisk1 -IsManualAttach $false

5. Refresh Server Manager.

6. Click the virtual disk, select Properties, and then expand Details.

7. From the Property drop-down menu, select IsManualAttach. The value should be False.

8. Optionally, if you want to verify that the value remains False, reboot the system, and from Server Manager, repeat steps 6 and 7.

Application Popup Event Log Messages Appear After Installing Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange

After you install Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange​, the Windows system event log may contain entries with the following message: The description for Event ID 56 from source Application Popup cannot be found. These event-log entries may occur after reboot or after plug-and-play removal of a storage module or an I/O module. The message does not indicate a failure and can be safely ignored.

Delay in Client/Server-Based Applications During Smart Exchange​ While Communicating Over IP Addresses on x710 PCIe Adapters

In Hyper-V configurations, client/server-based applications may experience delays during or after either a Smart Exchange​​ operation or an I/O failover, under the following conditions: 

• The client/server-based application is communicating over an IP address that is assigned to a networked SET team.

• The networked team is configured over an X550, X710, or XXV710 PCIe adapter.

The maximum length of these delays is 33 seconds.

Disks May Start Resynchronizing at Beginning of Upgrade

When you are starting to upgrade the system software, the disks may start resynchronizing. If you observe this behavior, you can safely ignore it, as the disks will perform a fast resync and then return to a duplex/healthy state.

Stratus Management Service May Not Restart Automatically During Installation

During a factory-installed system software installation, the sra_sysconfig.exe script may display the following error message after sra-mgmt (the Stratus Management Service) restarts:

If you see this message, you must manually restart sra-mgmt. To do so, open Services Manager in Windows, select Stratus Management Service, and click Restart.

Possible Message About PackageManagement During System Software Installation

During the full system software installation, if the active compute module displays the following message, type y to continue the installation.

Otherwise, the installation may time out.

Newly Renamed PCIe Adapters May Need to Be Added to Teams After Installation or Reboot

Windows may sometimes rename a PCIe adapter after a system software installation or after a reboot. For example, if you run the zen_verify command after the installation, the output may show the following:

Host Windows Network Teaming check          [FAIL]

If you see this failure, or if the NIC Teaming page indicates that one of the PCIe adapters is missing from the team, Windows may have renamed one or more PCIe adapters that now must be added to their respective teams.

To fix this problem, open a PowerShell window and run the following command:

& 'C:\Program Files\Stratus\bin\zen_team.p1' update 

Teaming Script May Not Update Static Addresses for 1G MGMT Network Interfaces

If you use the zen_team.ps1 script to create a Hyper-V SET team, the script may not update static addresses for the 1G MGMT network interfaces. (This issue does not occur for non-Hyper-V teams.)

After running zen_team.ps1, a number of error messages will appear in the output. For example:

[2025-02-27 00:15:37] [INF] -- Could not update static address for Ethernet 5. Removing old address and retrying...
[2025-02-27 00:15:37] [INF] -- Attempting to update static address for Ethernet 9 from 10.nnn.nn.nnn to 10.nnn.nn.nnn
[2025-02-27 00:15:37] [INF] -- Could not update static address for Ethernet 9. Removing old address and retrying...

Soon after you see the preceding error messages, additional error messages will appear in the system-management software (sra-mgmt) output. For example:

025-02-27 00:15:43.026602 bmc A IPMI inventory poll: retry to confirm: cmd: Get Channel Authentication 
Capabilities failed, err: client udp exchange msg failed, err: init udp connection failed, err: dial failed, 
err: dial udp [fe80::36ad:61ff:fefb:15c7%16]:623: connect: A socket operation was attempted to an 
unreachable host.

If you then run the ipconfig command, the Link-local IPv6 Address line for the 1G MGMT network interfaces does not appear in the output. For example:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : corp.stratus.com
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.nnn.nn.nnn
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.240.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.nnn.nn.nnn

To fix this problem, perform the following procedure:

1. In Windows, open Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections.

2. For both of the 1G MGMT interfaces (that is, the Stratus I210-BP devices), right-click the device, click Disable, and then click Enable.

3. Run the ipconfig command again to make sure that the link-local IPv6 address appears. For example:

     Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : corp.stratus.com
      Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::204:fcff:fee3:2ef1%7
      IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.nnn.nn.nnn
      Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.240.0
      Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.nnn.nn.n

Upgrade Fails If the BMC's IPv4 Addresses Are Not Yet Valid

The system software upgrade fails if the DHCP IPv4 addresses for the BMCs are not yet valid because they have not yet been obtained from inventory. (For DHCP, it can take some time for the addresses to become valid.) If this situation occurs, run the following commands:

C:\program files\stratus\bin\sysupdate -u admin -p UI_password -reset standby
C:\program files\stratus\bin\sysupdate -u admin -p UI_password -reset system

net_config.sh May Time Out Before Resetting IP Addresses

If you run the net_config.sh script and receive an error message, the script may have timed out before it could set static IP addresses to DHCP or vice versa.

If this occurs, reboot your active compute module, press F7 , select Stratus Maintenance for your boot device, and press Enter. After the compute module boots, run net_config.sh.

OS Tab of ztC Endurance Console May Not Display IP Address After a Smart Exchange

After a Smart Exchange occurs, the OS tab of the ztC Endurance console​ may not display an IP address for the active compute module. This display issue occurs only on systems using Hyper-V.

Ignore Certain Event Messages That May Occur After a Smart Exchange

After a Smart Exchange occurs, you may see the following event messages, which you can safely ignore:

• For X550, X710, and XXV710 teams:

  Failed to allocate VMQ for NIC 3E338063-4DB9-4721-B5C1-27D96244EA7F--9AC00624-A384-4AEE-98EC-CAAA25BDA939 (Friendly Name: Network Adapter) on switch CA022D10-EB9C-4F7B-94D1-B84C5A24A696 (Friendly Name: EMBEDDED-1). Reason - MAC filter does not exist on the physical adapter. Please try reconnecting the virtual adapter to the virtual switch or try restarting the physical adapter. Status = The specified request is not a valid operation for the target device

• For X710 and XXV710 teams:

VM Network May Appear To Be Inoperable After Many Smart Exchanges

After many Smart Exchanges occur, a VM network may appear to be inoperable. To address this problem, use the following Windows PowerShell operations to disconnect, remove, re-create, and reconnect the affected VMSwitch:

1. Display a list of the running VMs and their active VMSwitch connections:

   Get-VM | Where { $_.State -eq 'Running' } | Select -ExpandProperty Networkadapters | Select VMName,IPAddresses,SwitchName

2. Disconnect the affected VMSwitch from each VM connected to it:
   

   Get-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName vm_name | Disconnect-VMNetworkAdapterName

3. Remove the affected VMSwitch:

   Remove-VMSwitch vm_switch_name -Force

4. Re-create the VMSwitch:

   & 'C:\Program Files\Stratus\bin\zen_team.ps1' update

5. Reconnect the VMSwitch to each VM that was previously connected to it:

   Connect-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName vm_name -SwitchName vm_switch_name

Physical Device Number May Change and Does Not Correspond to drivers.log File Entries' LUN Numbers

For each LUN or pass-through disk, the Rapid Disk Mirroring Administrator (rdmadm.exe) references Physical Device numbers that are taken from and correspond to Microsoft Disk Management disk numbers. Windows is permitted to revise these disk numbers when a reboot or disk hot-plug occurs.

When troubleshooting, refer to the drivers.log file to try to identify the LUN number that corresponds to a LUN by correlating peripheral information in the log entries (for example, which disks located in which slots are members of the LUN). The drivers.log file is located in C:\Program Files\Stratus\log.

Do Not Use SSH During the Upgrade Process

Do not use SSH during the upgrade process because network connectivity is disconnected when the network drivers are upgraded, and the upgrade may not complete. Instead, use Remote Desktop or the BMC KVM interface (Remote Control).

zen_config.yaml Is Required During Installation

When you perform the full system software installation, you must specify the zen_config.yaml file even if you plan to respond to prompts on the command line for each setting.

Executing net_config.sh Requires a Planned Maintenance Period

When you run the network configuration script net_config.sh, it restarts the active compute module twice to complete all of the changes. Because you temporarily lose access to your applications, ensure that you run net_config.sh only on a non-production system or during a planned maintenance period.

Accessing Stratus Knowledge Base Articles

For information about accessing Stratus Knowledge Base articles, see Getting Help.

Getting Help

If you have a technical question about ztC Endurance systems, see Getting Help.