Just want to use the following as a troubleshooting example for service profile association. Here is a very common problem in the service profile configuration lab in the DCUCI course. (Most likely because the lab instruction is not very clear).
The profile fail to associate with a blade server. In the general tab of the service profile, it shows the configuration error as the following screen:

To troubleshoot, first of course need to pay attention to the error message, in this example is the QoS policy which cannot be applied. To double check, click the Faults tab to review the recent logs.

Now you confirm that it is the QoS policy problem. Then what’s next, where is the QoS being applied? One of the places being focus should be the virtual NIC, so go to the vNIC of the profile (using the Navigation pane). On the General page, though there is a warning, the QoS policy is actually applied. (Same as the 2nd vNIC).

Then what other place will have the QoS policy? Right, it is the vHBA.
So navigate to the vHBA, and finding that the state is “line rate is failed to apply”.

Click on the Faults tab to double check that the vHBA failed to apply configuration.
Actually the QoS policy being applied is for the vNIC, the traffic class is not marked as FC which can not be applied to the vHBA.

In fact, in this lab, we don’t even need to apply the QoS policy. So the simple solution is to just take out the QoS policy. Yet, from the Warning message, we know that the service profile is associated with the template. Thus we need to change the template instead of the service profile directly. Now, navigate to the vHBA of the corresponding template. Again we find that the vHBA is associated with a SAN template.

Thus, finally we need to go to the SAN template, unselect the QoS policy.

Back to the service policy, see! Its now starting to associate,

Can monitor the console by using the KVM.

In last week when I delivered the DCUCI class, one of the questions from student is: can a blade server be used immediately after plug into the chassis – strictly speaking it means can a service profile automatically be assigned to a newly plug in physical server.
The answer is yes. Actually we can pre-provision service profile i.e. a server profile assigned to an empty pool (or a pool that without any more unassigned server). Then using the pool autopopulating configuration (Create a server pool qualification by specific e.g. CPU, memory requirements. Then create a server pool policy by placing the server pool qualification and the target pool), once the new server is plugged in (and if it satisfy the pool qualification requirements), it will be automatically populated to the pool and the service profile will be immediately assigned to this new server.
Following figures illustrate the procedure.

1. Create a service profile and assigned to an empty pool. Here shows the service profile and the pool:

Note that the profile is in unassociated state and server assignment is failed (that’s normal at this stage).

2. Now I manually move a server to the pool (you can also use autopopulation for physically add a new server)

3. Then back to the service profile, now you can see that the service profile immediately assigned to the new server without any human intervention.