firmware for p410 or p410i

[Michael1]

Hi,

How do I know whether I have a p410 or p410i smart array controller. I must upgrade some firmware but I don't see the smart array controller anywhere mentioned in the OA UI. At the hp site I just looked at the Download drivers and software ... HP Smart Array P410i Controller page and seen many links. Are all these required.?

-M

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, 

Which server and generation do you have? Look in the quickspecs of that server. 

For example, the bl460c g6 has a p410i. 

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13238_div/13238_div.HTML

If the controller does not have an "i" at the end, it means it is a PCI-card that goes in a normal PCI (e, x or something) slot.

If it has an "i" at the end - then it is part of the system board or some other such board like backplane.

[Torsten.]

I assume you have a blade server, since you mentioned the "OA". Some blades have this 410 as "i" for the internal disks, for external disk a smartarray P7xx is used as a mezzanine card.

For firmware, just use the current SPP image and update from there (everything on your blade, not just the array controller).

[Michael1]

Thanks for the link (http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13238_div/13238_div.HTML)

We have different chassis. A number of chassis has bl460c blades while another chassis has bl460c g6 blades. I found the G1 spec here.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12518_div/12518_div.html

Interestingly it talks about a "HP Smart Array E200i Controller" instead of p410i. So I'm glad you gave me the lead there on that as I'll have to find firmware for that instead for the G1 blades.

The background is that these chassis are on site away unreachable from me here. While I have a c7000 testbed to test with I must get the relevant firmwares first and then install them on the testbed here. From talking to HP I understand require a five items: Cat switch, OA, iLO, ROM/BIOS and smart array controller firmware to bring the chassis firmware up to date. I have the cat switch and iLO and am now working through the other three. 

-M

[Michael1]

Hi,

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't thought of that From reading http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/service_packs/en/spparchive.html I was brought to http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/service_packs/en/eula.2013.02.0.html . This looks promising for G6 blades. Is there an equivalent for G1 blades as I couldn't find any? It was a g1 system I was talking to HP about so that might explain why they recommended fives sets or firmware (iLO, cat, oa, bios and smart array controller)

-M

[Johan Guldmyr]

Like Torsten wrote, just boot on the latest SPP and upgrade all components. The SPP also works for bl460c G1 blades. I've run it myself.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/spp/index.html

That will eventually get you here: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/service_packs/documentation/index.html

and then in the release note you can see that there are components for the bl460c in there.

[Johan Guldmyr]

If really you go this way with individual upgrades - don't forget firmware for possible mezzanine cards or other modules in the chassis (VC, etc).

[Michael1]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. From reading the pdf at http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1822529277/v85460/SPP2013.02.0rev1ReleaseNotes.pdf I see some prerequisites are required as mentioned in the "Running HP SUM on Linux" section. Some of these currently aren't on the G1 blade running RHEL 5. These include:

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qa | grep expect
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qa | grep lm_sensors
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qa | grep libnl

These blades are rather locked down with yum not being possible and so installing these could be tricky. It looks like a judgement call as whether to install the firmware, more or less piece by piece per blade or install missing software via RPMs and learn how to use the SPP. There also was no support for Win 2003 Server which I believe is on one of the blades.

Thanks for the tip but from looking at the OA there doesn't seem to be other hardware present. I did notice though a firmware for the "Power Management Controller Version" which currently is 3.4 so I'll have to find that.

kind regards,
Michael

[Johan Guldmyr · Accepted solution]

Another option is to boot the machines on the SPP iso. 

[Michael1]

Hi,

Thanks to everyone for their replies. In the end I downloaded the SPP ISO, burnt it onto a DVD, then in turn used the HP utility to create a USB stick from this. I then upgraded all the G1 and G6 RHEL blades by restarting each blade with the same USB stick inserted and going from there. Is there a way to do this remotely over the network? I upgraded the OA and CAT switches via the OA GUI.

WRT the Win 2003 Server, initially I upgraded with the "ProLiant Support Pack for Microsoft Windows Server 2003" and the "HP BladeSystem Online Firmware Bundle for Windows". For the former I had to update the "HP NC-Series Broadcom 1Gb Multifunction Driver for Windows Server 2003 Package" with cp009681. These really only brought me to around 2010 so I manually copied over the latest Windows 2003 Server firmware editions of BIOS, iLO, Smart Array E220 (G1 blade) and Power Management Controller firmwares onto the Windows Server and installed them by executing these four and rebooting the blade as required.

Thanks again for the tips and pointers you all gave.

-M