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HP Blade Chassis Maintenance (VC, OA, FW, BIOS, etc)

 
gingerdazza
Occasional Contributor

HP Blade Chassis Maintenance (VC, OA, FW, BIOS, etc)

I need to perform maintenance updates on all blade infrasturcture and find the whole subject hugely confusing. I would like to know exactly what I need to do. I have a c7000 chassis with BL460c G1's, BL460c G7's, and BL465c G6's. The chassis has OA 3.30, with GbE2c Ethernet Switches and Brocade 4/24 SAN Switches. The blades run WIndows 2003, 2008, and VMWare 5.0.

I believe I need to update in this order:

1. Blade server firmware

2. Blade Server OA

3. Offline components (HBAs etc)

4. Update the Interconnect Bays

 

I'm thinking about just keeping it as simple as possible and running offline updates on each server blade from the start (I assume I can do this from iLO virtual DVD and boot to ISO?) and do the servers one by one.

 

Q1. How can I possibly (and easily!) tell which version of firmware to install?

Q2. What can I do to rollback once started if it goes wrong? (I have already taken SHOW CONFIG and SHOW ALL exports)

Q3. DO I need to update the GbE2 and Brocade compnents and how is this done?

Q4. Have a I missed anything else out?

 

Would be grateful for as much info as possible.

 

Thanks

2 REPLIES 2
Torsten.
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: HP Blade Chassis Maintenance (VC, OA, FW, BIOS, etc)

Depending on the OS running on your servers, first update all the drivers (consider to use SPP 2014.02).

Then you may boot the blades from the SPP and update all the servers firmware. Next step is to update the OA, finally the interconnects.

 

Unless there will be a new version for the OA (due to heartbleed) use 4.20.

[EDIT:] 4.21 is available

 

For the GbE2 the latest I found is 5.2.9.  You first need to upgrade the boot image, then in a second step the firmware.

 

Check, if this is your model:

 

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdHome/?sp4ts.oid=1845926&spf_p.tpst=swdMain&spf_p.prp_swdMain=wsrp-navigationalState%3DswEnvOID%253D4064%257CswLang%253D%257Caction%253DlistDriver&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken

 

 

Better go to http://www.hp.com/go/hpsc and search for the switch serial#.

 

 

For updating the server firmware you have a lot of choices: boot from SPP (USB or vMedia or PXE, use HP SUM online or the OAs EFM (enclosure firmware manager).

 


Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.

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gingerdazza
Occasional Contributor

Re: HP Blade Chassis Maintenance (VC, OA, FW, BIOS, etc)

Thanks Torsten.

What is the best way to update the drivers? (for VMWare and Windows?)