Mismatched Firmware?

[MR_IT]

Hi all,  just started working at a new site that has a P4500G2.   I need to swap out a single drive that has failed.  The new drive has a more recent firmware than the older drives with the same model number.   The existing drives are at "minimum supported" firmware level.   Are there any potential issues with having two different drive firmware types for the same model drive in the same node/array?    Obviously, at some point I should upgrade all the drives to recommended/later firmware, but managment here is slow approve firmware upgrades/downtime unless completely necessary.

My new drive is model EF0600FARNA with Firmware HPD5.  Old EF0600FARNA drives in this array have Firmware level HPD3.   (Also, we have EF0600FATFF model drives a level HPD3--below minimum supported).

I looked and didn't see any documentaion specific to this question.  Any experience or knowledge would be appreciated. Thanks!

MR

[oikjn]

this is a question best directed to support.  I doubt its going to be a problem, but unless you go to the source you won't know for sure unless you like rolling the dice, which doesn't sound like your company likes to do if they won't approve the firmware updates in the first place.

[oikjn]

side note... nice thing about the SAN/IQ is that as long as you have NR10 setup you really aren't risking data loss if something goes terribly wrong. Worst case is losing redundancy while a rebuild is forced... always good to run a backup prior to making the change, but beyond that even just making the change won't cause system availability issues.

[Gediminas Vilutis]

We had similar situation earlier for ~6 months, didn't notice any problem with different firmware levels on disks

Gediminas

[Bryan McMullan]

As long as all the drives show the same class (under storage, disk setup tab), you should be just fine.  I've had this on a number of nodes.  At times HP refreshes the hardware under the same part number (switches vendors, sizes, etc.) and each new device may have a different firmware associated.

A node I'm looking at right now has 3 different levels (HPGC, HPG1, and HPG3).  Nothing to worry about.

[Northwoods]

We've run mismatched for years without any issues. However, If you call support after they find out there is a mismatch they will say patch the systems.

Twice a year I usually roll through the P4500 nodes and run the Service Pack for Proliant which takes care of this issue along with firmware for most other components (minus the backplane).

If paranoid you could also have a SPP with the firmware you want on it and pre-patch the drives on another system first then put them into the P4500 nodes to prevent the need to run the SPP directly on the P4500 nodes.