PowerEdge M610 and BCM57111 firmware update troubles

Hello

I don't recall an update that allows the M1000e or 11th generation blades to run 64 bit Dell Update Packages. I would suggest trying the update again using the 32 bit DUP:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=WR5R5

Thanks

Hello Daniel,

Thanks for taking time to answer my post.

I had already tried with the 32 bit version of the DUP, it failed on 5 blades out of 6 i've tried.

Only one has succeeded, but now the "dsu" utility on this blade (xen-blade04, see screenshot) thinks the firmware is outdated and want to flash it back to the previous version. Looks like the firmware version numbering has changed between latest and previous update packages (due to broadcom- > qlogic rebranding?).

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/ucM4GGA

Latest: Version 08.07.25, A00-00
www.dell.com/.../DriversDetails

Previous: Version 7.12.19, 7.12.19
www.dell.com/.../DriversDetails

So dsu thinks 08.07.25 is lower than 7.12.19.

--

Another thing is that before trying to flash the NICs from the CMC I tried to do it from the live update CD for the M610 blades, on the first two blades. The flash failed and it looks like the NIC completly died. It's not seen anymore. 

I tried to reseat and a bit later tried to hard reset the idrac (it worked but the NIC still don't show anymore).

Commands were:

racadm serveraction –m server-1 reseat –f

and

winrm i LCWipe schemas.dmtf.org/.../DCIM_LCService -u:[iDRAC_root] -p:[iDRAC_PWD] -r:https://[iDRAC_IP]/wsman -SkipCNcheck -SkipCAcheck -encoding:utf-8 -a:basic

screenshot: http://imgur.com/BYozkcR

There's something weird going on with these BCM57711 cards and their firmware and I don't know what to do next, especially for the two first blades where the cards seems to be dead after the flash attempt with the updater live cd.

I think those need to be replaced...

Thanks for your help.

Sébastien

I had already tried with the 32 bit version of the DUP, it failed on 5 blades out of 6 i've tried.

The LCC/iDRAC update has built-in timeouts which can cause updates to fail if they take too long. Since you have so many network controllers that it is trying to update it may be triggering this time out. If the updates are failing then I would suggest updating from an operating system. I would try booting to Support Live Image again and run the updates designed for RHEL from that operating system.

There's something weird going on with these BCM57711 cards and their firmware and I don't know what to do next, especially for the two first blades where the cards seems to be dead after the flash attempt with the updater live cd. I think those need to be replaced...

Yes, if those cards will no longer intialize then they will need to be replaced. There is a minimum level of functionality required for the card to receive a FW update. You can try booting the system with only those cards to see if they will initialize. You can do this by disabling the integrated LAN on Motherboard and physically removing the other add-on NIC. I would then boot to the Support Live Image and attempt to update the firmware.

Thanks

FYI 64bit DUP's work Fine on M1000e/M610's. The NICs and/or their firmware have an issue that DELL has NOT fixed. You supposedly have to do them individually booting from usb flash or cd/dvd. Ridiculous :(

BEWARE UPDATE 8.07.25!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a similar configuration as the gal above:
(16) X M610
a - m6220
b - m8024
C - m8024-K

Each Blade has
A - LOM (BCM5709S)
B - BCM57711
C -BCM8242-K 

We ran the DELL update on half our chassis (top 8) using the recommended 08.07.25 update (from 7.12.19) and the FW update bricked all 8 cards. We were blown away. Our production environment was down for two days until we borrowed 8 BCM57711's from another company. 

We then tried it using the DUP (from Dell DRM) and it did the same thing to card #9 (non-usable).

So it is obvious that this update IS NOT COMPATIBLE with the BCM57711 cards and it fails them permanently. DELL -You need to publish something on your website about this and get your updates in order. DELL -This is going to cost me over $3K in replacement hardware.

As a test, we installed WinOS to bare metal (on another M610 and card #10) and ran the Dell Windows x64 update packages from the product website. We updated on older 7.12.17 to 7.12.19 (Network_Firmware_35RF5_WN64_7.12.19.EXE) successfully. When we tried running the latest version 08.07.25 (Network_Firmware_WR5R5_WN64_08.07.25_A00-00_01.EXE) from the Dell website, it read "No products compatible with this update package".  The card was spared from devistation. Obviously a huge disconnect here DELL. I wonder how many customers are out major hardware for this SNAFU. This is obviously incompatible FW for the BCM57711 but all your update methods, except for the Wx64 OS, tries to push it out as valid effectively "bricking" the HW.

Here is the screenshot of another (Slot 2) that I need to try updating yet again.... Look at the version it wants to update the LOM to....

Wonderful....... I do in fact have 1 blade (slot 15) out of my current 10 in this particular chassis that does have version 8.7.25 but I have not deployed this server to try NIC workability. (no clue how this ONE blade has this newer firmware though) Slot 15 and 16 were purchased as a matching pair....

Firmware-wise on other blades, I have been using the SUU iso and connecting via Virtual Media Wizard and using UEFI and the NIC updates on SOME blades still will not upgrade their firmware....

Slot15 and 16

Fabric A Gb Ethernet Embedded LOM

Fabric B Gb Ethernet Broadcom M5709t

Wow.... I let the above run, and it updated the LOM's to 8.7.25 as listed, but the Mezz NICs did NOT update. I ran the SAME SUU update and now we have: really? same SUU updated backwards to 7.12.19???

and here we go again, blade 4, SAME blade hardware using SUU from UEFI:

lpprikej

That fwupdatewrapper error window is all too familiar. After that failure, the BCM57711 cards were unusable. Hopefully yours are not.