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Re: bare-metal firmware update for all the blades in enclosure

 
pakm11
Advisor

bare-metal firmware update for all the blades in enclosure

Hi,

Have three enclosures full of bl685cg7 blades.

No OS, no network except the management (OA/iLO) net.

CMS is InsightControl 6.3 running on RHEL 5.x.

Got the ICLX  and advanced iLO licenses.

OA f/w is already updated. No VC, HP pass-thru modules.

Trying to update blade f/w using 9.30 DVD for all 24 systems.

I'd like to do this with as little interaction as possible.

 

My options

 

1. Mount 9.30 iso as VirtualMedia from OA to all blades in an enclosure and power on from OA.

This works but as the f/w upgrade is completed, system reboots while VM is still mounted. So the cycle repeats.

 

 

2. Use FDT. Per best practices implementers guide this is the way to go for bare metal upgrades. Latest FDT available is 1.70 from 2010. Scenario 6 (pg 80) : "10. Script the deployment of the HP FDT ISO image through the iLO Virtual Media support. "

I tried to use 9.30 iso with this method but could not get the blade boot from that image.

I use RIBCL scripts from OA hponcfg to insert VM, mak it bootable, then use OA to power on blade.

RIBCL get_vm status returns image inserted. But OA "show server dvd" command shows nothing inserted.

 

3. Use IC bare-metal discovery and update f/w while running that task. I think this task will require network access from blades' NICs to CMS in order to access f/w files. If that's the case, I won't be able to use it since that network is not up yet. I was hoping to get this working by using the VirtualMedia image mount.

 

 I'd like to hear your comments on how to proceed for an unattended bare-metal f/w upgrade.

3 REPLIES 3
Psychonaut
Respected Contributor

Re: bare-metal firmware update for all the blades in enclosure

I have BL460 G7's that I've updated on multiple chassis at various firmware levels.  I had the 9.30 ISO on a flash drive and mounted it through the OA to all the servers.  The systems did their firmware update and restarted - at that time the OA dropped the ISO connection and systems went into the boot loop w/o an OS loaded (then connected with PLink to the OA to shut the servers down).  So it did works as expected for me.  

 

I know that doesn't help you - but from what I've seen step 1 should have worked for you.

DanRobinson
HPE Pro

Re: bare-metal firmware update for all the blades in enclosure

I'm sure you already figured this out, but in the interest of others who might stumble across it, I used this method in the past.

 

Host the Firmware update DVD ISO (or now moving to the SPP DVD ISO) on a local web server at the same site as the Blades.

 

SSH into the OA and issue the following command:

HPONCFG ALL << end_marker

Then paste in the following code, update the path to the ISO to reflect your local Web Server and ISO name.

 

<RIBCL VERSION="2.0">
  <LOGIN USER_LOGIN="myloginhere" PASSWORD="mypasswordhere">
  <RIB_INFO MODE="write">
    <INSERT_VIRTUAL_MEDIA DEVICE="CDROM" IMAGE_URL="http://ip.ip.ip.ip/spp2012-02.iso"/>
    <SET_VM_STATUS DEVICE="CDROM">
      <VM_BOOT_OPTION VALUE="BOOT_ONCE"/>
      <VM_WRITE_PROTECT VALUE="YES" />
    </SET_VM_STATUS>
  </RIB_INFO>
  </LOGIN>
 </RIBCL> 

 

You can replace the word ALL with a bay number or range. as well

HPONCFG 4 << end_marker

HPONCFG 1-8 << end_marker

 

After pasting in the XML script above, you need to send the end marker so in my example just type   end_marker  on a line by itself.

Personally I use a pipe | charachter but all our documentation has the end_marker phrase.

 


I work for HPE

Accept or Kudo

zagpoint
Frequent Visitor

Re: bare-metal firmware update for all the blades in enclosure

This came in handy today for me. Thanks!