Firmware upgrade of FC disks

[Ole Thomsen_1]

I just received a customer advisory that I should upgrade my BD07255B29 disks to firmware HP03 (EVA3000).

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=PSD_OD040609_CW02

But there is no link to the software, and I am not able to find it anywhere?

Ole Thomsen

[Ricardo Rocha]

Hi Ole

In addition to the disks firmware, the entire EVA could be upgraded. You should check this with your HP local support. In all the cases, it should be a HP engineer to perform all the process.

Bye,

Ricardo

[Ole Thomsen_1]

Hi Ricardo.

Thanks for your advice.

The advisory does not mention any mandatory upgrade of the EVA, but i have seen that there is new software for the system. I will look into that.

Anyway, according to the docs firmware upgrade of the disks is not a big issue, at least when using the ungroup method. I think engineer support is overkill for that job :-)

And I still find it strange that this firmware is not publicly available.

Regards,
Ole Thomsen

[Ricardo Rocha]

Hi Ole

Well, it's the first time a firmware is available for the EVA disks. Surely HP have better experience with that.

As you can see in the document, it's not supposed to customers download the firmware, as they're not supposed to perform the upgrade. I work a lot with EVA, and as far as I know all this kind of procedures are done by us (I'm working at HP).

If everything goes well in your local support, you should hear from them in the next weeks, as they will ask you for the upgrade. Meanwhile there's coming a new firmware for the controllers, so I guess eveyone is waiting for that one, so they can do it all at once.

Bye,

Ricardo

[Ole Thomsen_1]

Hi Ricardo.

Pardon, but I don't see anywhere in the document that customers are not supposed to do the upgrade? My english is far from perfect, so maybe i'm missing something written between the lines.

I would never pay a HP engineer to do such a simple job unless i had no other option, no offence ;-)

But as you suggest, it can be done along with the upcoming system upgrade.

Thanks for your advice.

Ole

[Ricardo Rocha]

Hi again

The big issue is that you do NOT have to pay HP for that. And if something goes wrong, you'll have someone to blame. :)

But I still believe they will call you to ask for doing the upgrade.

Bye,

Ricardo

[Uwe Zessin]

> And if something goes wrong...

Now, that is really encouraging ;-)

[Ricardo Rocha]

Hey Uwe

I was just kidding around. I performed some upgrades already on EVA and never (and I mean really never) had any problem.

The reason I suggest you call HP is that there are some other things beyond the EVA upgrade, such as SAN siwtches firmware, OS drivers that change after upgrading the EVA.

It would be better perfom the disk upgrade when upgrading the EVA firmware.

Bye,

Ricardo

[Uwe Zessin]

I was kidding, too - welcome to the club.

I have been working with EVA since firmware version 1 and have watched or done quite a number of upgrades. Some of us are installing these boxes, so it makes sense that we are able to do the disk upgrades as well.

[Ole Thomsen_1]

We have installed and maintained the system without any help from external parties, including HP.

I know this is not the usual way, but that is how we prefer to do things.

We have an Enterprise Carepaq, but I don't think that includes onsite support for upgrading disks. That would be a pleasant surprise :-)

Regards,
Ole Thomsen