PowerEdge 2900, SUU 6.5.3 issues...

Question

Hi again guys, creating a new thread, as my old one is flagged as answered, so not sure who can/can't see it... I ran the SUU 6.5.3 to inventory my servers, on one of my R710s, it came up with firmware for my Broadcom NICs that is older than the currently installed version. Current version is 6.4.4, repository version is 6.2.16. Does this identify a problem with the 6.4.4 firmware? should I downgrade?

Also, on one of my 2900's, I had a failed disk a few months ago, and sourced a replacement drive of the same model (ST3300555SS) that came with firmware T211 preinstalled, all my other drives have firmware T107 installed, however, upon running SUU, it only shows 1 drive, the new one with the T211 firmware, which doesn't require an update. Why isnt it showing the other 4 drives with the T107 firmware and offering an upgrade to T211? Additionally, according to the dell website, the latest firmware available for this drive is T215... so is there a reason 6.5.3 doesn't flag this drive as needing T215 instead of saying T211 is current?

Also some other drive firmwares arent showing up for my mirrored container for the ST373455SS drives, currently on S511, S52C available on dell website, does the SUU not cover drive firmwares properly?

I get the feeling it's already causing problems running drives of different firmware revisions in the same raid container, I was hoping the SUU would help me fix this...

DELL-Willy M · Accepted Answer

Here is a specific utility for updating the hard drive firmware directly outside the OS. I verified and this tool has the T215 firmware for the drive model that you listed above.

SAS and SATA Hard drive firmware offline update utility A34 released 1/24/12, highly recommended, urgent for Western Digital and Seagate SATA drives. This tool creates a bootable CD, USB Flash drive, or image for DRAC 5/6 virtual media, which you'll then need to boot on to install. The update process will bring up a GUI, select Automatic Update, 69mb:

ftp.dell.com/.../SAS_SATA_A34_ZPE.exe

Video how to - Choose " How to use the Hard Drive Firmware Tool with a bootable CD to update all SAS/SATA or SCSI drives."

As far as needing to downgrade the firmware on the NIC, there is no need to at this time. The update just missed the time cut off to be included in the SUU.

DELL-Rey G · Accepted Answer

so not all drives can be updated to T215, some of the drives that are at T107 can only go to T10D. The reason for this was because of the way the drives were made. The kicker is there is no way to tell which ones can and cannot be updated to what versions, you literally have to run the update package and see what the response is. I know, not the best implementation, but its what we had to work with at that time. We put some checks in place since then to make sure this doesnt happen in the future.

For the nics question, sometimes there are errors in how the update packages are flagged to make it into the next release. There are also packages that are not meant to go into SUU because a future version will be in SUU. It all comes down to a timing issue since SUU is released quarterly. The updates have to be ready more than a month before SUU is sealed to start testing. If an update package comes out after that date, it wont be in SUU until the next release. In this case, release 7.0 is coming at the end of this month.

theflash1932 · Accepted Answer

First, it is not possible to reconfigure an array to remove a disk ... only to add one.  Second, it is a common myth that drive make and model must match when used in a RAID array; that may be the case on some retail controllers, but OEM drives have special firmware on them tuned to match and work with complimentary settings on the controller.  As long as both are running the  most current firmware, there should be no issue mixing make/model of 'certified' drives in a VD.

DELL-Rey G · Accepted Answer

So I just spoke to my storage guy, and he's the man when it comes to these hard drive firmwares. The way he explained it to me was this. The T10D and the T215 have the same revisions to them, so firmware-wise, there is no difference. Think of it this way. You basically have a porche boxster from ~2007 and another one from 2010. They are both Boxsters, but the same firmware versions dont apply due to when the cars were created. So basically, when the drive was made determines which fw update 'version' they will take, but they are the same content wise, but the method used for each drive to actually apply the firmeware is different, so they  have different namings to keep them seperate from each other.

ogradyc · Answer

Hi, thanks for the above info.

I can't understand how I could have later firmware on these nics that didnt make it into the SUU, as I installed these servers in July 2011, at which point I ran firmware upgrades etc... how on earth did I manage to get the NICs on this firmware in July, and yet they still didn't make it into the SUU now? (Nobody but me manages firmware/drivers for servers in our organisation).

I have looked through the readme for the drive firmware update utility, highlighting in red, the drives I have across my server estate:

45.0 Seagate 15k5 SAS, 3.5" version S52C for drive models ST3300655SS, ST3146855SS and ST373455SS
26.0 Seagate T10 7.2K SAS 3.5", version T215, for drive models ST3300555SS (300GB), ST3146755SS (146GB) and ST373355SS (73GB)
28.0 Hitachi 15K SAS 3.5", version D598, for Drive model HUS154545VLS300 (450GB)
35.0 Seagate 15k SAS 3.5", version ES65, for drive model numbers ST3300657SS (300GB), ST3450857SS (450GB) and ST3600057SS (600GB)

Some of my ST3300555SS drives are on T107, do they definately support an upgrade to T215? as I cant see any revisions of T1xx firmware on the previous versions section of the drive firmwares on dells website.

Should I upgrade drive firmwares first, or BIOS/EMC/RAID firmwares first?

Could someone also point me in the direction of checking for firmware for my SSD's aswell? I've looked through the SATA section at both firmware utilities and nothing seems to list my SSD.

Media: SSD
Revision: VBC3CD3Q
Capacity: 46.00GB
Vendor ID: DELL
Product ID: MZ-5S70500-0D3
Serial No: S0PHNEAB300743300743
Part Number: KR0X2N7H7423013I0028A00
Negotiated/Capable Speed: 3.00 Gbps/3.00 Gbps

ogradyc · Answer

Bump! Starting work on this next week...

ogradyc · Answer

So... if it turns out these drives will not go to T215, i'd be running 4 drives on T10D and 1 drive on T215 all being part of the same raid-5 container... this worries me a bit. I'm wondering if my best option would be to upgrade the 4 T107 drives to T10D and remove the newer T211 drive from the container completely and lose 300Gb of space on the array.

Is this possible, if so, how would I go about reconfiguring the raid-5 container to lose a drive cleanly?

DELL-Rey G · Answer

btw, this is the driver you would need to update the os with. www.dell.com/.../DriverFileFormats

ogradyc · Answer

Thanks for all the assistance guys, put my mind at ease that it should be safe to run these drives alongside each other with differing firmwares. Everything was fairly smooth on the first 2 servers today, couple of firmwares wouldn't take for the life cycle controller and idrac on the r710 but got there in the end. Having a bit of trouble getting 2 of the 8 nics onto firmware 6.4.5 from 6.2.16 not sure what's going on there... ?? Will try again tomorrow. In response to the last reply, I am running Broadcom nics, but you suggested intel drivers? Thanks guys

DELL-Rey G · Answer

sorry about the intel nics, wrong thread!

ogradyc · Answer

Anyone any ideas why 6 of my 8 nics will flash to 6.4.5 but 2 of them wont? They will not move beyond 6.2.16

I *think* it might be the additional card I added last year that will not flash, dual port 5709C NetXtreme II

The only thing I can see different in BACS is that these 2 nics have an "iSCSI MAC Address" field in the information pane, the rest don't... If this is some type of special card that has more support for iscsi, is there a different update I need to run that someone could point me in the direction of?

ogradyc · Answer

Seems after updating them to 6.4.4 then 6.4.5 worked... phew

ogradyc · Answer

DONE!! 3 days of sitting in the server room on my own, finally paid off!

Appreciate all your help and advice guys, apart from one of my SSD's failing during the firmware upgrade (mirrored set, replacement under warranty arrived this morning) everything else was pretty smooth!

Thanks again!! :)

PowerEdge Hardware General

PowerEdge 2900, SUU 6.5.3 issues...

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