Updating Firmware on Blade Enclosure

[CDav]

Apologies for what may seem like a basic, basic query.

I have 2 linked c7000 Blade enclosures which house ESX blades and VMs. Both enclosures contain an Onboard Administrator and a Standby Onboard Administrator.

All have the same firmware version (v2.02)

I have downloaded firmware v2.04 and was ready to update the firmware on one of my enclosures according to the OA user guide page 93.

I am not sure if this can be done on a hot environment or not so "just in case", I planned to do it out of hours after first migrating VMs from hosts on one enclosure to hosts on another.

I initially planned to update one enclosure to see how the update took. However, on closer inspection it seems that the enclosure itself will be powered down and rebooted.

Paragraph 3, page 94 also implies that connected enclosures will also be updated and rebooted automatically.

My concern is that the enclosure's hosted blade servers will lose power and result in downtime for the end users (and pain for me).

Is this true? The User manual is kind of vague on this.

thanks!

[James ~ Happy Dude]

Hello,
As I understand, You have 2 Enclosure x 2 OA as active & Standby;
Once you update the OA Firmware on Enclosure 1, The STANDBY OA's firmware will be updated first; then the ACTIVE OA; then the Enclosure 1 reboots; My Understanding is, this has nothing to do with the Enclosure 2 & its 2 OA;
You Need to Repeat the Firmware Upgrade on the second one, which will follow the same procedure. Hence NO Downtime;

;) Regards.

NB: I haven't tried this personally.
& Im not sure but seems like the User guide should have mentioned -> "If two OA(INSTEAD of "enclosures") are attached, the firmware update process flashes the Standby Onboard Administrator first and then flashes the primary Onboard Administrator.

WARNING : Onboard Administrator V2.04 requires a minimum iLO2 version of 1.30 for HP ProLiant blade servers. Please upgrade the iLO2 version to v1.30 or greater before attempting to upgrade the Onboard Administrator firmware. Failure to do so may result in lost communication between the Onboard Administrator and server blade iLOâ s.

[Terri Harris]

Updating the Onboard Administrator will not effect any blade servers that are up & running, so this can be done safely in a production environment. The enclosure(s) do NOT reboot. With 2 OAs it will update both, then kick you out of the OA at the end so you will have to log back in. But the servers themselves will stay up & running.

[Raghuarch]

It means you will loose connection to access to the particular OA till the Firmware update.

Paragraph 3, page 94 also implies that connected enclosures will also be updated and rebooted automatically.

If it is linked to other enclosures the Enclosures will loose connection to this enclosure, till the update process.

It won't stop any activities on the servers.

Note:
1. Servers are not rebooted. The connection to iLO from OA is unavailable till the OA upgrades.

Regards,
Raghuarch

[CDav]

Thanks all!

That reduces my fears big time.
(Yep, iLO is up to date so no probs there).

[Adrian Clint]

OA firmware 2.10 is now available.
And peel off those "reserved for future use" labels on the back of the OAs.

As far as I understand the firmware update process.......

Loads new firmware to standby controller.
Loads new firmware to active controller but does not boot from it.
Boots firmware on standby controller.
Migrates active to standby controller.
Boots firmware on old active controller.
Migrates back to old active controller.

No server interruption.
Will kill any iLO connections and mounted virtual media!

Will turn on all FANs and power supplies for a few seconds during active/standby migration phase so dont worry about the extra noise you hear.