Disk Firmware Risk and Recovery

[cez]

I need to upgrade the disk firmware on 30 servers per this HP document http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00859596&dimid=909154160&dicid=alr_feb07&jumpid=em_alerts/us/feb07/all/xbu/emailsubid/mrm/mcc/loc/rbu_category/alerts.

What is the risk of doing the upgrade? And how to rollback to a previous or older version, or recover from it if the upgrade failed in the middle?

Thanks,
C

[Rob Leadbeater · Accepted solution]

Hi,

As with all operations that alter firmware you minimise the risk by making sure you have a good backup of your system before you start !

That said I've done quite a few firmware upgrades now, and have never had any problems. The only thing that is likely to cause problems is if you happen to have a power failure part way through the operation.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[cez]

Hi,

What can we do when there was a power failure part way through the operation? How do we recover from that? Can we rollback to a previous or older version, or recover from it?

Thanks,
C

[Torsten.]

I have never seen this and the chance is very small to see this happen. The update takes only some seconds.
I didn't ever seen a need to downgrade a disk firmware.

Just be sure to have a good backup of your data.

[cez]

Hi.

A separate question, according to the documentation, the f/w upgrade for hard disks can be done only in offline mode (not the online mode) using the HP Firmware Maintenance CD or from a USB key. Can someone please confirm?

Thanks for everyone's responses,
C

[Torsten.]

Overall yes, but ... it depends.

Your document says "Proliant or Interity" - what doy ou have? What OS?

[cez]

The servers are HP Proliant servers with the following models:

ProLiant BL20p G3
ProLiant DL360 G4p

OSes are Windows Server 2003. There might be some Windows 2000 Servers as well.

Thanks,
C