iLO hooks into BIOS, etc?

[Tlokein]

Does the BIOS and storage firmware need to be updated when you do a firmware update?   This came about from a discussion between a coworker and our manager.  My coworker insists you can't just upgrade the iLO firmware, you must upgrade the BIOS and storage firmware at the same time or you'll have issues, which will require shutting down the server and scheduling an outage..  My manager insists it's independent of the others and can be upgraded independently and we can just upgrade the iLO firmware on the fly while the server is up without any issues.

Best practice would be to do all however for the server in question we can't do that at this time unless it can be done without an outage/shutdown/reboot.

P.S. This thread has been moved from Servers > General to ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL) - HP Forums moderator

[Torsten. · Accepted solution]

Look at this (old) table about release sets:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p616879734/v73517/ReleaseSet_Compatibility_Table-9.30-4.pdf

It's the same now with current SSP's.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/spp/index.html

[Tlokein]

Thanks, that's a big help.

[anthony11]

If only SPP were usable this would be less of a concern. 

Coming from the Sun world where BIOS and ILOM were contained in the same firmware image I've wondered the same thing, but without any concrete documentation I've mostly crossed my fingers and try to update firmware as it comes out so that no versions get too far off from each other.  In no situation yet have I had a system break.

[Hazem Bahgat]

Greetings,

there is a document that is named "Firmware Upgrade Matrix" which is released with every version of SPP or even the old Firmware DVD, this PDF specifies the dependencies between each component on the server and the other one.

in Addition, you can use the SPP (Service Pack for Proliant) which will help you to upgrade the whole server firmware if you boot your server from it, or you can run it on the OS level, where it will upgrade the firmware, Drivers and management software all together (N.B. you may need restart for some components).

when you are using the SPP online, it would be recommended to use the interactive methode, so you would be able to install what you would like

[anthony11]

Running SPP requires IIRC a number of 32-bit libraries, and some digging.  That's a lot of work just to get firmware that is guaranteed to be at least six months out of date.

And what if one wishes to stick with the OS's bundled version of various drivers so that the OS vendor will support them?