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Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

 
Clint Phillips
Occasional Advisor

Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

I have 16 BL465c G5's in a single c7000 enclosure. The firmware upgrade worked in every blade but one after I had updated to iLO2 1.77, firmware 8.50 and OA 2.51 / VC 2.10. All blades are running PSP 8.20 on Windows 2003.

Unfortunately, my blade now shows as majorly degraded. When looking at all the blades through "Rack Firmware", the power management controller version shows as "Not Available" whereas the other 15 blades are displaying 3.4.

When I try to reinstall the firmware update, I receive the following error:
"The software is not supported for installation on this system.

Unable to communicate with the Power Management Controller. You may be able to correct this problem by cycling power. You must physicall disconnect all power, not just press the power button. If this is a blade server, you must remove and reinsert the blade"

I've physically removed and reinsert the blade into different bays half a dozen times without change. I've also tried resetting power through the OA using "reset power baynumber".

I've tried reflashing the iLO and reinstalling the Proliant Support Pack.

Anything else I should be attempting to do to fix this issue? Resetting Bios back to defaults? Remove/resinsert the cmos?

Cheers
cp

10 REPLIES 10
Clint Phillips
Occasional Advisor

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

Same issue has now happened on a BL685c G5. I noticed the power management firmware has been removed from HP's site which likely does not bode well.
c3_1
Advisor

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

Turn off Dynamic Power Capping!

The problem of degraded only happens when OA sees too much power being used.

If you leave capping enabled and have 3.3 (or 3.4?), you may find systems crashing/hanging or in my case bricking the blade when the cap is reached and OA is forced to reduce power to some resources. If that resource is a blade during firmware upgrade, you get a brick.
Clint Phillips
Occasional Advisor

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

We do not have power capping enabled.

HP said the only solution was to replace the system boards which was completed today. We are waiting on the supposed 3.4b firmware to be released until we update. Until then, the rack overview on all our blade enclosures will be filled with Orange warnings.
c3_1
Advisor

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

I had my system board replaced and it failed again (major degraded) within hours.
Clint Phillips
Occasional Advisor

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

On our end, the major degraded is not a system board failure, it's an issue with Power Management Firmware being at 0.7. Upgrading to iLO2 1.77 did not update the firmware to 3.3 so the blade enclosure considers it to a critical problem.

"The power management controller firmware on this blade must be upgraded. Please see customer advisory c01668472."
c3_1
Advisor
Clint Phillips
Occasional Advisor

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

Thanks - I will slowly start to deploy it in dev next week.
RuudB
New Member

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

We have some major issues with our blades due to the 0.7 PMC firmware. Whenever we reboot a blade other blades are going down , losing all connections (boot from SAN) and then they finally reboot. Luckily firmware 3.4b is out and we can update the blades with it. But does anyone knows if it is fixing the disruption from occuring on other blades OR if it fixes the blade so other blades can't disrupt that blade anymore?
Thanks and good luck updating.
WGTBW
New Member

Re: Power Controller Firmware 3.4 Upgrade on BL465 Fails

Same problem here, with BL480C. Screen display stays black, no display. How to perform the firmware update if you have no display?