Best practices firmware update controller disks P2000G3 SFF SAS

[KPL]

Hello everybody,

I’d like to know something about best practices updating firmware of the controllers and the disks of a P2000 G3 storage system . I’ve read the best practices white paper for the P2000 G3. But this white paper hasn’t answered all my questions. Since March 2012 we have running an P2000 G3 SAS SFF dual controller storage system with an additional D2700 enclosure. Two Proliant DL 380 G7 are attached to this system running ESXi 5.0. We have no problems with the storage system so far.

We have bought  six new 900 GB SAS disks to expand the system.

At this time we have configured three VDisks.
VDisk1 (RAID6) consists of 16 600GB SAS enterprise disks. Due to disk failures we have now different firmware versions on these disks. 15 Disk are EG0600FBLSH with HPD5 firmware, one EG0600FBLSH disk has HPD3. A 600GB Disk type EG0600FBVFP configured as a global spare disk has HPD6 firmware.
VDisk2 (RAID6) consists of 12 146GB SAS enterprise disks. 11 Disks are EH0146FAWJB with HPDE firmware, one is a EH0146FBQDC with HPD1 firmware. For this type of disk I haven’t found any firmware update on the P2000G3 drivers home page. On the drivers home page of the disk itself I’ve found a firmware HPD3. But this is only applicable under a proliant platform and is not as new as HPDE on the other 146 GB drives. So I can’t keep the disks on the same firmware level as recommended from HP.

Are there some SFF disks which are not compatible with P2000 G3 SFF?
VDisk3 (RAID5) consists of seven 900GB SAS enterprise disks. All these are EG0900FBLSK with HPD5. But the new 900GB Disk are also EG0900FBLSK but with HPD7 firmware. On of them is configured as out second global spare disk. But our aim is to expand the VDisk3 with these drives.

The storage controller an running on TS230P008 Firmware, so we planned to update to the newest one which is TS250R023.

So here are the questions:

Is it better to update the drives first before we update the controllers?
Is it possible to update the disks without stopping I/O when we configure them as available disks?

Thanks for answers.

KPLaabs

[akeelm]

Hi,

Is it better to update the drives first before we update the controllers?  First option is to update the controller firmware.
Is it possible to update the disks without stopping I/O when we configure them as available disks? No, Because the disk channel will be paused when the firmware update is done so it will cause disruption, this has been documented in the relase notes of disk firmware update.

Regards,

Ak

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hello Answers Below

1.Is ot better to upgrade the Disk f/w prior to Controller F/w

Ans:-You can upgrade the disk f/w to latest and controller f/w later, however it is better to Keep the controller f/w to the latest and Disk f/w to have proper sync between the Controller and Disk related Bugs.So my suggestion is upgrade the controller f/w then upgrade the disk f/w

2.Answer to the second Query:--For P2000, Disk f/w activity always required maintanance/No I/O window.