Updating ILO2 & OA firmware on new install

[Bruce Rose]

I have a new installation of 4 c7000 enclosures each with bl460c servers. Before building the OS on each I'd like to update the firmware on all using SIM (5.1). I have tried to do it on a couple of enclosures, but get a fail and there's the message that the system isn't returning an IP. The systems aren't built, but all ILO2s have an IP assigned.

[David Claypool · Accepted solution]

There are 3 parts to this: OA, iLO2 and blade firmware updates.

1. OA can be upgraded with the command:

update image ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p308276036/v42971/hpoa202.bin

...will acquire the OA 2.02 firmware from the internet and flash the OA. If your OA is not on the internet (or needs a proxy) you can host it on an internal ftp server and modify accordingly. If you set OA up to trust HP SIM, you can send this to OA as a command over SSH.

2. OA can be used to upgrade all the iLO firmware in the enclosure with the command:

hponcfg all ftp://iss:tools@hprc.external.hp.com/iLOfw/ilo-update.xml

...which will acquire the appropriate firmware specified in the XML file. Again, if the internet isn't directly accessible, you can take this XML file and the firmware image and host internally, remembering to edit the XML to point to the new location of the firmware.

3. Blades...

...not as easy. There are basically 3 methods whereby the host firmware is flashed. If the host has not got an OS loaded yet, there is a ROMPaq diskette which is booted to flash the firmware (different disk for each model), or a Firmware Maintenance CD which can be booted. With an OS loaded there is an Online ROM Flash Component that can be loaded or it also can be done through the Version Control Agent and HP SIM.

There also are variations. You can use the Virtual Media of iLO to attach the bootable methods above. If your iLO has been upgraded with a select license, you can script that virtual media attach and host the images on an ftp or http server and use commands in HP SIM. If you are using and have licenses for Insight Control, there are deployment jobs for firmware updates.

I'm also told that with a little ingenuity, you can use the Firmware Maintenance CD, edit some of the autorun files, and attach a USB CD drive to the enclosure and have it update each of the blades in turn. If you have a local HP systems engineer, they can probably hook you up with the methodology. However, what I'm describing is a field "science project" and is not a product from HP that you can get telephone assistance with or anything...

[Bruce Rose]

that worked great .. I did the OA with no issues at all. The ILO2 I couldn't do ALL per the owner, but I was able to substitute 1,3 to do just those two blades. There was some extra information that came back, but no errors and after a minute or so the ILO2 showed as being at 1.35 and not 1.30 where we had started.

THANKS