Upgrading Firmware on an HP Disk Array w/ Autoraid Model 12h

[Jeffery L. Wilson]

The latest patches show a version identifier of HP62. Do we apply all three patches or just one of these? Are there any other prerequiset patches? Can I upgrade directly from version HP25 to HP62. Will my data be intact after the firmware download? The reason for this firmare upgrade is that we are adding new disk drives to the array. The HP25 firmware will not allow us to include the new disks which have a new firmware version on them. Any direction here would be helpful.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Patrick Wallek]

My advice for upgrading the firmware on your AutoRaid is, if you have a maintenance contract on the unit, call HP and make them do it. This is included with your maintanance contract and they can determine which specific patches need to be installed.

All of your data SHOULD still be there after the firmware upgrade if all goes well. You still need to do a FULL backup of the data on your array before you (or the HP service rep.) do the upgrade.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Jeff,

I agree with Patrick that it's best to have HP do the firmware upgrade but you can do it yourself. I've done about 10 of them and they all went flawlessly. Make sure that you install the ARM patches on all the boxes your AutoRAID's are attached to THEN install the firmware (unless otherwise noted). You can do the firmware upgrade in 1 step without worrying about any intermediate patches.

As has been noted, have a backup so that you won't need it.

Regards, Clay

[Gary Cannon]

I would suggest to have an HP Customer Engineer upgrade your firmware. Sometimes the upgrade will not go smoothly and it's better to have an HPCE on site with a spare controller.

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

It's actually quite easy to do it though.

The help command you want is the
/opt/hparray/bin/download -?

You need to make sure than armserver s/w
PHCO_22101 (11.0) and 22100 10.20 is installed.

Other than that... remember to umount your filesystems and disctivate the vgs on the autoraid before you do it... just so firmware is sole traffic to the array.

Later,
Bill

[KapilRaj]

umount all; vgchange -a n /dev/vgXX .......
arraymgr -s shut "array id"
download -C /tmp/"firmware file" "arrayid"
verify the same with arraydsp command

kaps

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

it's only necessary to umount filesystems on the autoraid. The shutdown of the autoraid I believe is done by the upgrade procedure itself, although I can't quite remember, it probably is safe to do it though since you want your cache flushed and maps written to disk correctly..
Later,
Bill

[Jeffery L. Wilson]

Thanks for all the input.

After many failed attempts, we were told by an HP Engineer that we cannot upgrade directly from HP25 controller firmware to HP62. We must make an upgrade to HP33 and the next revision and so on ... HP33 is unavailable from the web. We sugested that an HP engineer bring out an HP62 controller and hot swap it. Then copy the firmware between controllers. They said this was possible but recommened the following:

1. Backup everything.

2. Umount everything.

3. Delete the LUNS.

4. upgrade the firmware on the disks and controllers.

5. Re configure the luns.

6. Re-apply the data.

HP said this was the only way we could expect a reliable outcome.

This is frustrating, the system has been live for two years and now it's time to do some hot-swapping, but it can't be done without re-building the whole raid array configuration. I am planning to purchase re-furbished older drives that will have the compatible firmware. Maybe I'm naive, but I expected a longer life-span for the raid array configuration. It is a shame that backward compatibility does not have a higher priority.

Jeff

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

That's not quite true... there will be one intermediate step up to HP32/33, then you can go all the way up.
There is a service note describing this.
(I have tested it too)

But I have to agree with them, backup, restore, for two reasons.
1. just in case
2. when the luns are restored, performance will improve.

Remember, you don't have too much data (large disks not supported with your f/w..) so the backup should'nt take too long.....

Bill

[Bob Inglis]

There seems to be some confusion about firmware revisions for the two models of AutoRaids. Let me attempt to clearify.

AutoRaid Model 12 (A3515A)
HP02 Original Release
HP11 Second Release
HP15 Third Release
HP19 Temporary Release
HP25 Fourth Releasae
HP27 Current Release
See Service Note A3515A-3A

Autoraid Model 12H (A3700A)
HP06 Original Release
HP11 Temporary Release
HP24 Second Release (known bug)
HP26 Second Release (for NT only)
HP32 Third Release
HP54 Fourth Release
HP56 Fifth Release
HP60 Sixth Release
HP62 Current Release
see Service Note A3700A-11

Firmware has to be updated to accomidate new drive types. The older firmware revisions do not have the head/cylinder/sector information for the newly released drive.