Upgrade Onboard Administrator Firmware with 2 OA's

[JL123]

Hi,

When I upgraded firmware on my c7000 chassis last year (think it was 2.10), the upgrade broke one of my OA's (the standby one). Both of the OA's were still in the chassis and the synchronize firmware did not work and it rendered the standby OA faulty. I called up HP and they sent out a new OA, I did the exact same thing and the standby OA broke again.

Another call up to HP and they sent out another OA, and the HP tech sent out some instructions which said to remove the standby OA from the Chassis, update the active OA, then plug the standby OA back into the chassis, go to the 'sychronize firmware' button and then it worked successfully.

This is now been our procedure when updating OA versions, to remove the standby OA. We are looking to update from 2.32 to 2.41.

Moving forward, is it common practice for everyone to remove the standby OA's and then do the synchronize firmware? Or with the newer firmware is there no problem with leaving the standy in the chassis while you update?

[cjb_1 · Accepted solution]

No. Never needed to remove the standby OA and have recently upgraded a number of enclosures with the versions you mention. Upgrade will flip you back and forth as it installs and activates the firmware but nothing like you describe.

One interesting thing we had with 2.41 (a while after patching) is that the standby OA went into an unmanageable state - could ping it fine and a 'show oa status 2' reported its presence but not it's state. Put a call into hp as we though it had to be a faulty module (as we reseated etc a number of times).

The suggestion that came back (rather quickly)was to remove the active OA and insert the standby module into the vacant slot. Worked straight away and when we switched the modules back to their original bays everything was ok again.

[James Kennedy_4]

I've never had any problems upgrading the firmware on both OAs at the same time. Must've just been a problem with that early firmware.

Going to 2.41 shouldn't be any problem.

[Adrian Clint]

I've done many upgrades in many locations and never used synchronize firmware.
Never seen an OA broken in the way you describe. I have had situations where the standby would not upgrade. So I removed the active and then did a firmware direct on the standby when it became active.

[JL123]

Thanks for the response all. I have successfully upgraded one of my enclosures without removing the standby OA and it was fine, it must of just been earlier versions of iLO's / OA's or I must of had a few dodgy OA's...
Thanks.