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Precision Workstation R5500 Firmware Update
I have a client with a Precision R5500. I am trying to get VMWare ESXI installed on it but before I do, I was going to update the firmware.
However when I lookup the service tag # the server shows "Not Found". I even ran a DETECT HARDWARE and it still shows not found.
So I searched for Drivers for the Precision R5500 and found this:
However when I download and run it, it shows the upgrade option and says I am upgrading from E01 to A14 and this is making me nervous as I don't want to brick the server. Any advice?
As a side question. VMWare ESXI could not detect the ethernet drivers. Not sure if this is related to the way out of date firmware. But if anyone can direct me to those I would appreciate it.
_abednego
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July 5th, 2020 16:00
It seems you found a firmware upgrade for the power-supply unit (PSU) of your workstation. My policy is updating every firmware available, ever. But I understand it may be risky and possibly not required to run ESXi. The firmware update you point to fixes a communication problem, so it possibly is only for monitoring the workstation power health, not something critical for ESXi.
The most recent BIOS upgrade for this workstation is the Dell Precision R5500 System BIOS version A14 from november 2nd, 2018. Older versions start at A00, A01, A03, A06, A07... no E01. Perhaps E01 means "Emerson release 01" (as noted before you are pointing to a firmware upgrade for a 750 Watt Emerson PSU.)
Looking at the old (i.e. not updated anymore) but very handy product support page for R5500, it seems there are firmware upgrades for SAS drives, SATA drives, removable storage and the SAS RAID controller. Worth looking at them, but if you feel uneasy just look into the BIOS setup to confirm the current BIOS level⸺there is a good chance BIOS version A14 has been applied right now, as it is a two years old BIOS release.
To be honest, I don't know a lot about type-1 (bare-metal) hypervisors like ESXi, but there is a good chance the guest operating systems will be able to update early the processor microcode, only change provided in BIOS release A14.