Firmware of HP LTO-4 Drives -- Are they All Sourced from HP?

[Alzhy]

Just wondering coz our SL500 ibraries -- which sport HP Ultirum LTO-4 Drives seem to need an upgrade in their firmware.

Sun ercommends going with H49W whilst HP's Website mentins B45D as the latest.

Can we use HP's firmware on these Drives or should we use StorageTek's (err Sun err Oracle) firmware rev?

[TTr · Accepted solution]

Since the SL500 is supported by StorageTek (err SUN err Oracle), I would stick with the StorageTek provided firmware upgrades. StorageTek probably gets it from HP but it may be custom made for those HP drives that have to operate within a custom SL500 environment.

[Richard Bickers]

All HP drives use HP firmware but they are all different versions of the same core functionality. You must have the right version in the drive for it to work in the appropriate library.

The drive won't allow you to update the wrong version anyway and LTT won't let you do it either.

LTT will only offer you HP branded firmware though if you have the files it will allow you to download it to the drive. You should get your firmware file from the appropriate supplier - in this case STK/Sun/Oracle.

[Richard Bickers]

I should add that when HP does update its firmware for a particular drive generation, it makes that update available to all it's customers so it's likely that the two firmware versions you refer to have the same improvements in. It's just that one will be for STK/Sun/Oracle library drives and one will be for HP library drives.