Online Hard disk Drive firmware upgrades?

[BNewby]

Is there/Will there ever be hard disk drive online firmware upgrades for hp blade servers (p-class, c-class)? We have several disk firmware mis-matches, because we get POST Error traps sent to SIM. With the very large amount of proliant servers we have, we must have online firmware upgrades for everything. I am aware the firmware maintenance CD has the upgrade, but that doesn't work for our size. SMH version 3 via VCA version 3 shows the firmware version for the drives, but provides no mechanism to install the updates.

We haven't lost a server yet and determined the root cause to be hard drive firmware. Should we wait for a reason to change firmware before upgrading the drive firmware?

Thank you in advance for your response.

[Dhanesh Amirthalingam]

hi BNewby



As per your above quarry you need to take the
complete system back up before doing this activities ,did you tried to upgrade the SMHU to the latest and did you tried to physical console ? what is the status of those plz let me know

[BNewby]

I'm not sure exactly what you are requesting I try. I am asking as a larger picture if we can update hard disk firmwares online. I am running the latest SMH and see the firmware on the version control agent, but no mechanism to update it. It isn't practical to update servers from the CD in my environment (8,000+ proliant systems). I cannot boot into anything but the OS running the applications...The console is out of the question, it has to be scripted (HPSUM please?).

[Nicolas Melay · Accepted solution]

AFAIK, online hard disk firmware upgrade is only available for Linux systems ('scexe' packages).

[BNewby]

Online firmware upgrades for hard disks only available on linux...not sure why only Linux, however.

[Nicolas Melay]

I guess it's a consequence of the Firmware Maintenance CD being based on Linux. :)

Also note that not many (if any) hard disk manufacturers provide online firmware updates for Windows.

[BNewby]

I guess we'll continue to get annoying traps in SIM for POST errors with old disk firmware. Its a little annoying to get a trap everytime a box reboots. If there isn't an online upgrade, we won't upgrade...At least until we have an outage on more than a couple boxes.

[Uwe Zessin]

I usually use the firmware CD, but it looks like there are some packages for online upgrades via Windows, e.g.:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=1127655&swItem=MTX-617275ac5bf1495eab062766a0&prodNameId=3863301&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=1

If you say that it is not effective to go hunting for single files, I agree - I have not looked whether there are bundles available. I don't have to deal with lots of servers so a CD is good enough for me.

You might want to look into the SmartStart scripting toolkit which can be used to build your own solution.

[BNewby]

How in the world did you find this? That's exactly what I was after!

Now I just need the SCSI update, this takes care of the SAS updates.

[Uwe Zessin]

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/platforms/options.html

Storage:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/platforms/storage.html

Drive Storage Products:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/index.html

SAS Enterprise:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/serial/sas/index.html

Software & Drivers:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/ProductList.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=1127655&taskId=135

Select Disk, then OS.


Or search for the disk drive model:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/site/search/r4_0/jsp/search.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&tx=DG0146BAHZP