HSG80 ACS Upgrade from v87F-13 to v8.8-x

[James Spooner]

We are currently running in a W2K Clustered environment and will soon be moving to W2K3. We are in the plaaning stages of updating our HSG80 SAN environment. We will be updating the following components...

-SAN Switch 8 firmware v2.6.2a to v2.6.2c
-MDR firmware stays the same at v1187a
-DS-KGPSA-CB firmware from v3.91a1 to v3.92a2
-HSG80 controller firmware v87F-13 to v88F-2
-Platform Kit from v87b to v88b
-HBA Driver stays the same v5-4.82a16
-SecurePath from v4.0c to v4.0c-SP2-1
-LPUTILNT from v1.6a6 to v1.8a11
-SWCC from v2.2.0.213 to latest....

During the previous upgrade from v86F-x to v87F-x we had to uninstall most components as we were moving from SecurePath v3.1a to v4.0c and had encountered a Blue Screen in the process... HP StorageWorks Support finally found and pointed us to an article written up to specifically address the issue... But it involved uninstalling most everything... and starting from scratch...

Now that we are moving from v87F-13 to v88F-2 (or whichever is the latest patch level) I cannot locate the supported procedure... The release notes and install guide for v88 of ACS only gives you "fresh copy" instructions...

Any pointers to procedure docs, gotchas, or alternate advice for those upgrade plans set out above would be much appreciated...

Thanks
James

[CA1004210]

James,

I have upgraded ACS to V.8.8-F2 (latest available as of date) on atleast six pairs of HSG80 Controllers so far. I have not experienced any issues till date - I opted for the safe approach of an "offline upgrade" by stopping all host I/Os activity to the array by shutting all the hosts down.

Watch out for this - your ECB expiration date is likely to get a boost - I noticed on a number of arrays that ECB expiration date was increased by an year n a half or so ....

Good luck.

Saket.

[James Spooner]

Thanks a bunch. I was also planning to do an off-line upgrade. It is good to hear that you have had nothing but good experience in performing the upgrades... And thanks for the note about the ECB's...

James