Steps and prerequisite before firmware update Virtual Connect with no downtime ?

[Server-Support]

Hi People,

Can anyone here please share your knowledge and procedures that I can follow to perform Virtual Connect Firmware update ?

I assume that the entire HP Blade servers running on VMware ESXi uplinks has been configured to use the NIC on different VC modules so that I can perform the upgrade without causing any downtime to the Virtual machines.

Thanks in advance.

[msh_it · Accepted solution]

Hi

Below are the steps I follow:

1- Confirm your current firmware and the new firmware version

2- If the current one is too old I normally run multi phase’s upgrade, for example the current is 3.30, and I will go to 3.70 then 4.0 then 4.31 the latest as of now

3- Backup your virtual connect configuration and take show all through putty session

4- Make sure you have downtime or at least your users may expect some network disruption, I will explain why

3- Install VCSU

4- Run VCSU and issue the command healthcheck to make sure everything is ok

5- If it is ok then run VCSU again and issue the command update, type the OA ip and user name 

6- When it asks you about activation method choose "manual" in this case it will not activate automatically

7- Wait for the firmware upload and the message of completion and the log file location

8- Identify which bay is acting as primary, will assume it is bay1

9- Log in to OA and restart the secondary module (assume it is in bay2) give it 5 to 10 min, then confirm that it took the new firmware

10- Log in to VC interface and failover the VC manager to the secondary; in this case your original primary will become secondary. Bay1 is the new secondary and bay2 is the new primary

11- Wait for the status indicator on the top middle to become green, it normally takes few minutes

12- From OA again restart the original primary module, in our case it is bay1, give it 5 to 10 min, and then confirm that it took the new firmware. IMPORTANT, when you restart the original primary module, you may lose connectivity for few seconds, if you are running ping -t that would be around 5-10 times out, that’s why you may need step#4

13- Repeat steps 5 to 12 if you are doing multi phases upgrade.

Hope the above is helpful and not too long :) 

[Server-Support]

Many thanks for the detailed steps MSH.

It is better to have long detailed steps than too simple but ends up with disaster :-/

I heard from one of my friend that during the VC firmware update (not sure which version) the VLAN configuration was reset to default in both modules, resulting in total downtime for all of the production VMs.

so I guess, by following your steps, I can do it during the working days after hours since I got redundant VC modules and each VMware vSwitch got uplinks in different VC modules.

[KrishnaNadig]

Hi,

Very useful post, thank you!!

I am using HP OneView to manage the enclosure. In this case, can I upgrade the VC using VCSU or is there a different method?