Poweredge R710 firmware updates

Question

I've recently bought myself an old R710 to practice with VMware.  I've installed ESXi 6.7 and it's currently happily maxed out running the Folding at Home appliances to help with COVID-19.  So far so good, but updating the firmware has been an absolute nightmare.  I've been going round and round in circles looking at various articles here and elsewhere, but most of the information is out of date and no longer valid.  I've so far managed to update the DRAC by extracting the updated firmware from the EXE file and updated the BIOS by working out the difference between EXE and exe (!) on the Dell download page and making a bootable DOS USB.  However I'm completely stuck with anything else.  The Dell ftp server no longer supports ftp for the R710 so the F10 key approach doesn't work, and the R710 is no longer in the DRM catalogue.  There apparently used to be some bootable ISO images on the Dell box site but they've vanished.  So, here in May 2020 is there a method of updating the R710 without having to install Windows just to run the updates?

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Ajmichael,

Boot to the Build and Update Utility (BUU), then at the menu page you swap out the BUU media with the Server Update Utility (SUU) media, and then run the updates.

Let me know how it goes.

ajmichael · Answer

Brilliant - thanks Chris, I'll give that a go tomorrow. Andy

ajmichael · Answer

For info, it's Tag No. but has obviously been rebuilt at some stage because it now has twin X5675s, 128GB RAM and an H700 controller. Andy

ajmichael · Answer

Unfortunately that doesn't work. I get the "System Build And Update Utility v1.4 will begin in 10 seconds" splash, then a scrolling screen full of "Unknown Interrupt or fault at EIP 00000060 c04011ed 000011ec" followed by a reboot.

I tried using F10 to boot to the USC and gave it the SUU disk to look at. It told me that updates are available for the LifeCycle Controller and H700 but I canceled out as it wanted to update the DRAC and BIOS with older versions.

Andy

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Sorry I misunderstood. You can download the Live CD here, then run the Linux version of SUU from within it, after it boots, as the Live CD is Linux based.

DELL-Chris H · Answer

The tag got removed, so I am not able to see it, but you could Private Message me it.

If you are wanting to do the iDrac and BIOS, you can download the iDrac firmware and extract the firmimg.d6 file and then run that from the LCC Update tab. As far as the BIOS, you can download the "Non Package" version of the BIOS update, then after booting to 32bit Diag exit to a command prompt and run the non package bios update from there.

ajmichael · Answer

I've done the BIOS and DRAC thanks, just the remainder that's eluding me. Andy

ajmichael · Answer

Thanks Chris, will do!

ajmichael · Answer

Unfortunately the SUU won't run from the Live CD, there are all sorts of odd permission errors, even if I log back in as root, Java refuses to run at all. I also note that the Live CD is complaining about running on unsupported hardware, I think it wants 12th generation or above.

However having a live Linux system meant I could grab the bin file with the latest version of the H700 firmware and update it. Having now updated the BIOS, iDRAC and H700 I suspect that's all I really need.

Andy

second2falcon · Answer

How did you manage to di it in the end? I currently have Proxmox (debian based hypervisor) installed and wanted to to all updates which I can.

If I understood you correctly, you grabbed the .BIN from the support page, but how did you actually do the update?

Max

PowerEdge Hardware General

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