Experience with System Center Update Provider from Dell and BIOS

We have updated several thousand bios using SCUP and the Dell Catalog - as always, test test test. . .

"We have updated several thousand bios using SCUP and the Dell Catalog - as always, test test test. . . "

...how did it go :) lol - and- how did you do your tests?.. Once you tried it on ONE PC... well lets say, I dont know if you can load OLD bios onto it again. and POW, your testmachine is borked.. :) Eh. VMMachines (usual test env.. -duh-) ;)

first, we tested on as much real hardware as we can (obviously, can't test in VM) - and yes, you can downgrade your bios to a prevsious version. ONce we finished our testing, we made it available via an option deployment for a while, before eventually making it mandatory (setting a deadline on the update deployment)

See. Already worth comming here.. I will downgrade BIOS today for testing ;)

One thing i noticed that I found a problem is the very old broadcom driver (if you have broadcom). But the over all roll out was ok. I'm still continue to test ...

While the BIOS deployments thru SCCM have worked pretty well, I have found some issues with the Dell catalog in SCUP. The issue - which my MS contact points directly as a Dell issue - is that the Dell removes old BIOS versions from the catalog without expiring and so SCCM becomes polluted with abandoned old entries leaving no way to expire those entries properly. Your mileage may vary depending by how often you pull down updates in SCUP - last I remember they were recommending quarterly - but I think they make catalog changes much more frequently.

hm- I'm pretty sure the team expires them, but I'll forward your note and see what they tell me.

As I said, in SCCM I current have old BIOS entries that are no longer in the current SCUP catalog and their status is not expired. So why are they still there? Did I miss a download? Did I download a bad catalog? Or did they get dropped from the catalog without expiring? IMHO they should not only be expired but supersceeded, I realize that is a bit more work but it certainly would be a help as the catalog continues to grow.

I checked with our team - they shouldn't be there - check to see if those old bios appear in SCUP - if they are in SCUP, check to see that Expire=True - once Expire=true, you can re-publish updates to wsus, then run your synch in ConfigMgr - that should make them disappear.

Greg

"I checked with our team - they shouldn't be there - check to see if those old bios appear in SCUP - if they are in SCUP, check to see that Expire=True - once Expire=true, you can re-publish updates to wsus, then run your synch in ConfigMgr - that should make them disappear.

Greg"

One small example from my SCCM server, there are 3 Lattitude E5500 BIOS: A11, A13, A15 all not expired. Looking at the SCUP catalog I see just 2 of these listed: A13, A15 and both are not expired. A11 does not exist in SCUP. So I'm trying to understand the process: It appears that Dell only keeps the last two versions in the catalog. And it would be my responsibility to set A13 to expired now before Dell releases the next BIOS version because it will be removed from the catalog? Or is there some other method to know when the old BIOS is going to be removed from SCUP?

I'm going to check with the team and get back with you - I see your point, and see something similar in one of my test labs - I'll post back my findings...Thanks for your feedback.

Greg, That's great news. 3-6 months would be fine by me, when you decide could you post the decision? Would you have any thoughts on how I can clean the existing old entries in SCCM?

I *think* you would probably (unfortunately) need to import a custom update that has the same GUID, publish it, and expire it, but I haven't tried it yet - I'll see if I can find more info.
Greg

dave787 - Howdy I work on the same team as Greg and have been working with SCUP as well. Our SCUP catalog has BIOS revs for A09, A11 and A13 and A15. Now I can export out the model and BIOS version for the ones your missing from our catalog - I suspect we have them in SCUP as we have been importing legacy catalogs from SCUP for quite awhile now - The next step from there is to import them into SCUP flag them as expired and then synch with your SCCM SUP - In theory it should expire them as well on the SCCM side. They key here to getting a SCUP update properly synched is that the update unique id must match otherwsie SCCM SUP is going to believe its another update - SO with that said you'll need to confirm that the update you have in SCCM unique id matches up with the update unique id of the update in SCUP.

And Im trying to understand why you would have the BIOS in SCCM SUP and not SCUP - Unless you upgraded SCUP from another version - I know the upgrade from 3.5 to 4.0 did nasty things to ones SCUP database - So is this the case? Or some other scenario (i.e. Test SCUP replaced by another SCUP install).

Thanks
You can email me directly and Ill get the E5500 BIOS cab to you so you can give that a try.