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Re: Upgrading C7000 Enclosure to allow BL460 Gen8 blade with existing BL460c G6 blades.

 
samtl008
Visitor

Upgrading C7000 Enclosure to allow BL460 Gen8 blade with existing BL460c G6 blades.

Hi All,

I've inherited a job from a colleague for a customer who has 2x C7000 enclosures, each enclosure has roughly mirrored services on the blades in each enclosure (Exchange, RDS, DC etc), so should one fail the other can take the slack. The only downtime allowed is around 8 hours in overnight and they are both located in a remote data center, so visits have to be pre-arranged etc, so this looks like it with be 2 overnight jobs.

 

We are looking to upgrade the OA, VC, iLO2 and the current BL460c G6 blades BIOS/PSP's in preparation for adding a newly purchased BL460c Gen8, but all the hardware has never had any upgrades since it was put in back in 2010, so the versions are all old and varying. I've been looking in the planning documents, but have little experience with enclosures, so could do with some clarification.

 

Both OA's are running 2.60 Aug 31 2009 firmware.

Both VC's are running 1.34 firmware.

All iLO2's are running 1.81 Jan 15 2010 firmware.

All BL460c G6's have either L24 10/01/2009 or L24 07/25/2009 BIOS.

All BL460c G6's are running Windows Server 2008 R2.

All BL460c G6's would appear to have the PSP 8.3.

 

I believe the earliest OA firmware for a Gen8 has to be at least 3.50 and the VC at least 3.51, so we have quite a version difference already. I've been trying to find out if we can jump from 2.60 -> 3.50/or higher and 1.34 ->3.51/or higher, but only found references for 1.x->2.x over the past couple of days of research i've been doing.

 

Before I go mad, does anyone have any advice/information that would highly benefit me ? As i've not done this before and if it were to go horribly wrong, i'd be in the stinker a bit, i  want to make sure everything is planned out. (my colleague told me last time anyone here attempted an enclosure upgrade, the VC's lost all their network configuration and it took a whole working day to get service back up again).

 

Thanks

 

 

4 REPLIES 4
Casper42
Respected Contributor

Re: Upgrading C7000 Enclosure to allow BL460 Gen8 blade with existing BL460c G6 blades.

The general rule of thumb I use for the OA and VC is try not to jump more than 3 versions at a time. HP likely would not have tested that and so you could run into problems.

Your VCs are likely 1/10 modules based on the age, so also know they will max out at 3.60.

I would probably jump the VCs up to 2.31 which was around November of 09

Then jump to VC 3.18 and OA 3.11

Then jump to VC 3.60 and OA 3.71

As for the blades, use the SPP bundles that match those various versions above, or however close you can get.
The main thing the blades need is iLO and SystemROM to match the OA.
But the last thing I would do is run the latest SPP against the G6s to make sure ALL their firmware and drivers are up to date.
samtl008
Visitor

Re: Upgrading C7000 Enclosure to allow BL460 Gen8 blade with existing BL460c G6 blades.

Hi Casper42, thanks for the info, its been a great help today ! You were correct in guessing, the VC's are 1/10 modules, so 3.60 will be as far as we can go.

 

I've been reading through the SPP PDF's and think i've found an upgrade path similar, could you have a look :

 

VC   Firmware     OA Firmware         Blade ROM                                             iLO Firmware               SPP Recommended

Current 1.34       2.6 - Current          L24 10/01/2009 - Current              1.81 - Current   

 

2.31                        No change              No Change                                             No Change  

 

3.18                       3.32                           L24 2011.05.05 (BL460c G6)         2.06                                2011.09.0

 

3.6                          No change              L24 2011.12.02 (BL460c G6)         2.09                                 2012.06.0 (B)      

                                                                    L31 2012.02.25 (BL460c Gen8)    1.05    

 

No change           3.71                          No change (BL460c G6)                     2.15                               2013.02.0    

                                                                    L31 2012.12.14 (BL460c Gen8)    1.2  

 

I've tried to match all the corresponding firmware components according to the SPP's, to ensure compatibility.

 

I wondered if you could clarify on your earlier post, during the upgrade process do we have to update the blade ROM's and iLO's concurrently after each VC/OA firmware change (also including software/drivers on every blade) ?

 

Or could we upgrade the VC and OA in increments and then finally after the VC is on 3.60 and OA is on 3.71, then upgrade the iLO and ROMs to the last versions needed ?

 

We're planning to do one enclosure (with 8 blades) in one night (10pm-6am), if we have to do the first option, it would take a significantly higher amount of time, so planning would be key.


Thanks again for your help

Casper42
Respected Contributor

Re: Upgrading C7000 Enclosure to allow BL460 Gen8 blade with existing BL460c G6 blades.

So it would be a little more risky, but you could try just doing the iLO with each step to keep it in lock step with the OA, and then only hit it with the entire SPP during the last update.

I would also likely flatten the last 2 you have above into 1 step. Those OA and VC versions are all close enough together I think you would be fine.

Keep in mind also there is a CA out there for jumping the BIOS up on certain machines causing the NICs to all show as new which can effectively erase any teaming you have on Bare Metal Windows hosts.

Example:
http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/kb/docDisplay/?sp4ts.oid=4268690&spf_p.tpst=kbDocDisplay&spf_p.prp_kbDocDisplay=wsrp-navigationalState%3DdocId%253Demr_na-c03080742-1%257CdocLocale%253D%257CcalledBy%253D&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken
samtl008
Visitor

Re: Upgrading C7000 Enclosure to allow BL460 Gen8 blade with existing BL460c G6 blades.

Hi Casper42, 

 

Just wanted to give you an update on my post from October.

 

Saturday just gone, myself and a colleague completed updating the second enclosure for our customer. All went smoothly and we did the following:

 

VC Firmware    OA Firmware         Blade ROM                                        iLO Firmware           SPP Recommended

Current 1.34    2.6 - Current          L24 10/01/2009 - Current        1.81 - Current      

2.31                  

3.18                   3.32                         L24 2011.05.05 (BL460c G6)   2.06                           2011.09.0

3.6                                                                                                                                                         2012.06.0 (B)  

                             3.71                         L24 2011.12.02 (BL460c G6)   2.15                           2013.02.0

 

In this order: 

 

VC from 1.34 to 2.31.

OA from 2.6 to 3.32.

ROM and iLO from SPP 2011.09.0

VC from 2.31 to 3.18.

VC from 3.18 to 3.6.

ROM and iLO in line with this from SPP 2013.02.0

OA from 3.32 to 3.71.

 

We used the VCUtility for the VC and the HP SUM for the OA, iLO and ROMs.

 

The only problem we encountered was from the first enclosure we did last weekend, when we did the first VC upgrade. We chose to add the -oe manual switch to the end of the update command, so it didnt automatically reboot the VC. We went into the OA GUI and there was two options; Shut-down and Reset. Foolishly, I chose the Reset thinking it would just reboot the modules, but it turns out it wipes its config to factory. In hindsight I should have realised that Reset really means Reset. After we restored the config (which was quick and simple), the next VC flash we did, we left the -oe manual swtich off and let it do it itself which was subsequently fine.

 

The enclosure is now up to a level enough for our Gen 8 blade, so we have achieved what was needed. We will be looking to update all the HP software/drivers via the SPP in the new year to bring them all in line completely, but for now, it is all working OK.

 

Thanks for you help on your previous posts ! 

 

Sam.