MSA 2040 drive firmware update: Really need to offline?

[kofik]

Hi

Having used various block device storage appliances from the entry- to mid-tier level from other vendors reading  about the disk drive firmware update I was unpleasantly surprised by the statement that a drive firmware update required to be done offline i.e. to have no I/O whatsoever on a used drive.

I'm a bit surprised that a system coming with two redundant controllers couldn't - really ? - not update the drive firmware online. I don't expect replacement drives to be at the same firmware level of the rest of the remaining drives and as such it would be best to get all drives to the same firmware level. How are you doing your MSA updates?

[Fred4]

Hello

I have several times update the controller firmware online, I just choose a low pic activity for the MSA.

The only firmware that must be upgrade off line is for the hard drive.

Hope this help

Regards

Fréd

[Shawn_K]

Also, please remember it is not the controller doing a drive firmware upgrade. The drive itself has to do a reset to apply the firwmare on some types of disk drives. For example, most SATA HDDs need to do a power cycle before the drive firwmare gets applied. Depending on your raid version you would not want host IO being applied to the drive while doing  a reset. Having no host IO to the disc helps protect the raid set and user data.

Cheers,
Shawn

[kofik]

Hmm, thank for your feedback. That's rather unsatisfactory, but it it how it its, good to know.

But to show how strange this decision is: On one side HPE writes  in the "HPE MSA 1040/2040/2042 Best practices" that "Disk drives of the same model in the storage system must have the same firmware revision. If using a firmware smart component, the installer would ensure all the drives are updated"

... and yet I can't really expect a replacement drive to come with the same firmware the rest of the system's drives are currently using. After a couple of replaced drives the system will expectedly contain a mixture of various firmware levels. By following HPEs recommendation I'd eventually have to plan a full downtime every couple of times after drives get replaced.

[Torsten.]

no problem to update a replaced drive as long as it is not in use (not part of a vdisk, still in AVAIL status).

The problem when updating drive firmware during I/O is, the drive reboot may take too long resulting in all affected LUNs may go offline, hence a real online update is not supported.