Finding patches/upgrades for SAN stuff

[Mauricio Tavares]

I have here EMC (CX700), IBM (DS4800), and brocade hardware. I would like to be able to know what is the firmware on those devices. Also, it would be nice to find out if there are any bugs in those firmware versions and which versions should I upgrade those devices to as needed. What I had in mind is something like what redhat does for RHES: a bug tracking mailing list that will let me know which issues are critical and which ones are mostly important but not really scary.

What I have found was that I had to go to their websites and hope to find the right page with the info I need. Having a way to say "Hey, I have this DS4800 with firmware XXX in the controller and YYY in each of the cabinets. What should I know about that?" would be really nice.

[Torsten.]

Hm, it's not a hp array ... ;-)
With some luck you find somebody here who can help you ... otherwise I would search on the vendors pages.

[Mauricio Tavares]

yeah. But, that is what I got to deal with. I wonder which of the HP stuff plays nice with IBM's SVC. But I digress. :)

I guess I was hoping someone would also say, "hey, there is this site you can subscribe, enter your devices and current firmware, and it will send you emails about bugs and issues and recent upgrades" that would cover different makes.

As Dr. Farnsworth said before, one can dream...

[Sheldon Smith]

As far as the firmware on the Brocade hardware, I believe all of the Brocade switches I have ever seen understand the "version" command. The HP web site http://hp.com/go/san will have the latest firmware updates for the B-series (Brocade switches) that HP supports with HP arrays.

Try checking the EMC and IBM webpages for what they support.

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi Mauricio,

as Dr. Farnsworth would also say, "Good news, everyone!!"
EMC have something like that. Do you have access to EMC Powerlink? (http://powerlink.emc.com/). If not you can register there, too. They have an Alerting section, where you can be mailed about updates and issues for various products.
We also have CX700 here, running FLARE 2.19 (don't know the minor number), and it's pretty stable, we have never had problems with it in a year and a half.
In Powerlink there is also E-Lab Interoperability Navigator. Here you can get latest support matrices, find out what software/firmware is supported.

HP have the release notes for the Brocade Firmware (Fabric OS) on their website. The release notes also contain a list of closed defects.

Regards,
Stephen