DLT Drive Firmware

[Jason Berendsen]

We have an HP 20/700 DLT 8000 silo. HP told us in the past to keep the drive firmwares consistent within this silo to make sure problems don't arrive. We currently use OMX105.frm firmware. Recently we have been getting drives with a different personality of firmware, OML3. Does anyone know the differences between these firmwares? We aren't able to update the firmware on the OML3 drives to OMX105 firmware. Has anyone else heard that it is a good idea to keep the drive firmware within a silo at the same rev level?

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

We have just been through a whole process to keep the firmware in the drive and the larger backup device(silo) current.

HP's procedures for doing it were shall we say not up to snuff. We ended up doing using a browser based update.

Direct answer: yes, this is a good idea. Doing this solved a major problem for us.

SEP

[Jason Berendsen]

Steven,

Any idea why HP has the 2 differing firmware personalities? If so, what makes them differnt and can they be magically changed to the personality we use?

[Steven E. Protter]

I'll tell you the whole story, though its third person.

John, our SAN and backup man suspected a firmware issue after running an HP search and finding symptons both with Veritas and our hardware that pointed to a firmware mismatch.

Our issue involved the backup device suddenly becoming non-responsive while the Veritas software happily thought it was writing away to the tape. Until some buffer overflowed and the whole operation ground to a halt, usually around 3 a.m.

So he contacted HP and the emailed him a procedure for hooking up a scsi cable and updating the firmware.

All that accomplished was updating one of the two drives and breaking the firmware completely.

While waiting for HP support to come out, was bored, it was the middle of the night, so he tried browsing into the device with Microsoft Exploder.

The menu or interface seemed to have a procedure that would let you update the firmware from a file on your local pc. He downloaded the file, tried it out and it worked.

Nobody has any idea why we weren't told to try the browser based solution the first time.

Thats the way it goes sometimes when your out on the bleeding edge like we are.

In summary its a good idea to plan the update but be ready for contingency. Now that you've checked itrc as our san mand did not do, you can ask your support rep about a browser based update and see if your hardware supports that. Some does, some doesn't depends on how new it is.

Our DLT is an two drived 10 tape Ultrium 2 library.

SEP

[David Ruska]

I didn't see your actual questions answered, so I'll jump in.

> Any idea why HP has the 2 differing firmware personalities?

HP uses 5 different personalities in the DLT8K. OEM1 for standalone, OML3 for premerger HP, CPA2 and CPQ2 for premerger CPQ, and OML105 for STK (L-series).

Why different personalities? First, because the communication across the serial (library interface) port varies depending on the product it is integrated into, and the drive may or many not have a front panel. Second, not every version of firmware gets tested in every platform, so the personality prevents untested versions from being used in the specific product.

> If so, what makes them differnt and can they be magically changed to the personality we use?

No, you can't change the personality. Both SCSI and FUP tape updates will fail for "invalid personality for code update".

> We currently use OMX105 firmware. Recently we have been getting drives with a different personality of firmware, OML3.

Besides different firmware, the OMX105 drive should also be different from an hardware perspective. It should have a front panel and a drive handle lever for either an L-series or timberwolf library. The OML3 drive will not have a front panel, and uses a motor to operate the handle (no physical lever).

If the hardware looks right for an OML105 drive, but it has OML3 firmware, then there's an issue in the supply chain process where the wrong firmware is getting loaded.

From another poster's message:

>> Nobody has any idea why we weren't told to try the browser based solution the first time.

>> Our DLT is an two drived 10 tape Ultrium 2 library.

They are talking apples and oranges here. The "DLT" in question is a Quantum DLT tape drive, not "Digital Library Tape". This person has a Ultrium tape drive which supports firmware update through the library interface. These are completely different drive technologies.

[David Ruska]

One more statement that I'll comment on:

> We have an HP 20/700 DLT 8000 silo. HP told us in the past to keep the drive firmwares consistent within this silo to make sure problems don't arrive.

Actually the library doesn't really care. You can mix and match drive firmware as much as you want. However, it is recommended that you use the latest firmware which is V86 for all 5 of the HP personalities (we finally synced them all up).

[Bob H.]

I am researching how to create a firmware update tape for the DLT7000 drives in the A4845A STK Timberwolf. Do I just use the images from the LTT ftp site?
ftp://www.hp.com/pub/information_storage/software/ltt/firmware/

If so, the STK file is LTT_DLT7000_V109_OML3.frm .

There are written procedures to dd to a blank tape in itrc.