Dell PowerVault ME5 Series Administrator's Guide

Best practices for updating firmware

• In the Alerts panel on the dashboard, verify that the system health is OK. If the system health is not OK, expand the view to see the active health alerts and resolve all problems before you update firmware. For information about Active Alerts, see Alerts panel
• Run the check firmware-upgrade-health CLI command before upgrading firmware. This command performs a series of health checks to determine whether any conditions exist that must be resolved before upgrading firmware. Any conditions that are detected are listed with their potential risks. For information about this command, see the CLI Reference Guide
• If any unwritten cache data is present, firmware update will not proceed. Before you can update firmware, unwritten data must be removed from cache. See information about the clear cache command in the CLI Reference Guide.
  CAUTION Removing unwritten data may result in data loss. Contact technical support for assistance.
• If a disk group is quarantined, resolve the problem that is causing it to be quarantined before updating firmware.
• CPLD revision (Complex Programmable Logic Device)
• To ensure success of an online update, select a period of low I/O activity. This helps the update to complete as quickly as possible and avoids disruption to host and applications due to timeouts. Attempting to update a storage system that is processing a large, I/O-intensive batch job may cause hosts to lose connectivity with the storage system.
• Confirm PFU is enabled by clicking Settings > System > Properties > Firmware Properties.
• Do not perform a power cycle or controller restart during a firmware update. If the update is interrupted or there is a power failure, the module might become inoperative. If this occurs, contact technical support. The module might need to be returned to the factory for reprogramming.