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Equallogic PS6510e Firmware Upgrade
Good Morning Dell Community,
We currently have 2 EqualLogic PS6510e members configured as Raid 50's as part of a group. Each member is still on firmware version 5.2.6 and we have identified the appropriate upgrade path from https://eqlsupport.dell.com/support/download.aspx?id=6442456361 (5.2.6 > 6.0.11 > 7.1.14 > 8.0.6 > 9.0.9). These appliances are currently hosting numerous VM's still on 5.x.x.
We recently migrated all data off of one of our members to address a software issue which was preventing replacement disks from being recognized/rebuilding, and it is now sitting in a maintenance pool. Now that this issue is resolved, we are looking into upgrading the firmware as it is extremely outdated. We are hoping to minimize downtime and I have read in several forum replies / technical documents that we should make sure to increase the timeout values to 60 seconds on our iSCSI initiators. What we are hoping to do is to upgrade the firmware from 5.2.6 to 6.0.11 on member2 which currently has no data on it, then migrate the data from member1 to member2 and then upgrade the firmware on member1 from 5.2.6 to 6.0.11. We would rinse and repeat this method over the course of a month or so until we got current. A few questions we have are:
1.) Are there any known issues migrating data between member's on different firmware versions?
2.) Are there any known issues we might run into with out VM's as we begin to get in the 7.x.x and 8.x.x given we are a little backdated on VMware version?
3.) Most of our disks in our 48 disk array are running PD04/KD0A firmware versions. Will the disk firmware need to be upgraded in addition to the EQG appliance firmware? Any known imcompatibility issues as we get into 8.x.x and 9.x.x?
4.) I assume our Group Manager interface will need to be upgraded as well, as Java 7 is likely no longer supported. I have read that there is an HTML5 web interface, is this accurate?
5.) Is our plan the best way forward in trying to accomplish this upgrade with minimal impact?
I know this is a lot, so any insight to any of these questions would prove helpful. I continue to scan the forums and internet.
Thanks.
dwilliam62
3 Apprentice
3 Apprentice
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1.5K Posts
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September 1st, 2020 06:00
Hello,
re: 1. As long as you stay within the compatibility levels as you upgrade. I.e. don't try to take the maint pool member up two levels before upgrading the other members. So 5.2.6 and 6.x are fine. 5.2.6 and 7.x are not.
Re: Timeout. The timeout value is very important and not just for firmware upgrades. A controller failover, especially on a busy array can take longer to failover than the default disk timeout allows. Resulting in crashed VMs. So being prepared for the unexpected controller failover will also prepare you for firmware upgrades.
re: ESXi. There should be no compatibility issues with older ESXi and newer EQL firmware revisions.
re: 3. There is also an upgrade utility DSUM that will let you know if you need drive firmware updates as well.
re: 4 There is NO HTML5 GUI available nor will there be one in the future. It's still Java. Java7 will work with the newer applet. It's when you get the Java 8 that changes in default security settings prevent EQL applet from running. The latest 9.1.x or 10.x addresses that. Or you can modify the security setting in Java. But you have to edit a file by hand
re: 5 The rolling upgrade will worik it just takes a very long time to go back and forth moving the data over and over again. Especially since you have so many levels to go. My suggestion would be to NOT do that. Find a quite time and do the upgrades one after another. The empty one will take very little time to do.
Also I would not stop at 9.0.x. I would go at a MIN to 91.x. but 10.0.3 is most current version and that's what you should run.
Also make sure you ESXi servers are configured to EQL best practices.
https://downloads.dell.com/solutions/storage-solution-resources/BestPracticesWithPSseries-VMware%28TR1091%29.pdf
Regards,
Don