What does Onboard Administrator command "update image sync" do ?

[chuckk281]

Joseph had an Onboard Administrator command question:

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Lets say I have an enclosure that originaly only has 1 OA. Then the customer purchase the second OA and it gets installed. As expected the firmware on it is old – so you use the “update image” command to update it’s firmware – but find that this command updates both OAs (even if the first OA was already at that fw release).

I first looked for a way to specify that only a particular OA get updated, but I could not find an option, but then I found the above command.

What exactly does this command do ?

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Monty replied:

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The OA CLI “update image sync” command will update the standby OA to the same firmware version as the active OA – IF both OA modules are the same hardware type.  The reason the update image sync command does not need to select an image file location is the active OA creates the image file from its own image.  Since the OA internal image is different on the two different c7000 OA modules, that is the reason the update image sync won’t work.

If one of the OA modules is the c7000 OA with KVM and the other module is the original c7000 OA without KVM – then you have to perform an “update image” using an HTTP/FTP or USB key with the OA firmware *.bin file.

I was reminded that the OA firmware sync (using either CLI, GUI, or LCD) results in the highest firmware version being applied to the OA with the lower firmware version – not just active OA version to standby OA.

But the OA firmware sync feature still requires identical OA hardware in both bays – otherwise you need to perform firmware update from a file.

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Then Ed asked a clarifying question:

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So Monty…I may have misunderstood your last response…so let me throw this at you.

What if we are running an older firmware version on the Active and the Standby OA is bad.

The replacement OA comes from HP with fairly recent firmware (…and yes it can happen like the last two OAs we received).

So what you’re saying is that the new Standby with more current firmware gets to dictate the overall firmware level for the pair?

If so…we always talk about making sure servers are updated prior to any OA updates being done and to ensure we don’t update the servers various firmware entities too far away from what the OA firmware is.  In other words letting the OA be the yardstick by which we first update our servers’ firmware.

If the OA is all of a sudden bumped up to something a customer hasn’t tested or more importantly is too far ahead of PMC, iLOx or BIOS firmware…what then?

Or am I misreading your previous response?

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Monty explained:

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OA firmware sync feature is manual – not automatic.

For your scenario – the active OA continues to run the enclosure and reports that the standby OA has a different firmware version.

Manually initiate a firmware update to the active OA with the desired firmware version and both OA will be set to that version and the enclosure configuration will be backed up to the standby OA.

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I hope that helps you in your Onboard Administrator updates. Any other questions or comments?