Category: Oracle Engineered Systems

Following the recent PCA upgrade from 3.0.2-M3.5 to 3.0.2-M3.7.1, we encountered an issue where Grafana was unable to send alerts as intended. Since Grafana plays a crucial role in monitoring aspects such as the health state of ZFSSA, restoring this functionality became important. Upon raising a service request (SR), it was identified as a bug that is planned for resolution in version 3.0.2-M3.9, according to support. Therefore, if version 3.0.2-M3.8 is released in the future, we’ll need to verifay the situation again. Previously, there was a MOS note detailing the configuration of SMTP for the earlier software release, identified by Doc ID 2964429.1. Unfortunately, this document is currently unavailable. I am hopeful that it will be updated in the near…

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Situation The Oracle Private Cloud Appliance X9-2 was delivered at the end 2022 with high capacity storage. For the Oracle PCA X9-2, there are two distinct storage types available, differentiated by their disk characteristics such as type, size, and whether they are HDDs or SSDs. The standard block size for a Block Volume in this system is set at 8k. However, if your specific workload requires a different block size, you can customize the Block Volume at the time of its creation using the tag ‘PCA_blocksize’ (this aspect will be explored in a separate test). The disk shelves within the system are interconnected using dual 100Gb interfaces. Two variants are available:   High Capacity – DE3-24C High Performance – DE3-24P…

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At 16th of October, Cisco made a vulnerability public which affects Cisco IOS XE components – Cisco IOS XE Software Web UI Privilege Escalation Vulnerability. According the notes: This vulnerability allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to create an account on an affected system with privilege level 15 access. The attacker can then use that account to gain control of the affected system. Vulnerable products are components where the web UI feature is enable. Components The Oracle Orivate Cloud Appliance X9-2 contains several Cisco components – see: VPAT – Oracle Private Cloud Appliance X9-2: Decision Tree The provided decision tree: Verification Let’s check the PCA components. Repeat the steps for all components according the IP list. Switch Name IP Management pcaswmn01 …

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I’m currently in the process of updating an older Oracle Private Cloud Appliance X5-2 combined with a ZFS Storage Appliance ZS7-2 using the latest available patch for X5-2, version 2.4.3.2. As a precursor to the upgrade, a verification job needs to be run using Oracle’s provided tool, pca-upgrader. When initiated with the -V parameter, this tool checks the PCA’s health status and assesses all components for their readiness to be upgraded. It’s imperative that all these checks pass before initiating the actual upgrade. The first major step in this extensive procedure involves upgrading the Management Nodes. Related Links: PCA Management Node Pre-Upgrade Checks – 1st Run – FAILED The initial attempt concluded with a FAILED status – refer to the…

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