Cisco UCS 5108 firmware upgrade

[reza.karim]

Current Cisco UCS 5108 firmware UCSM: 3.1(2e)A | FI-A: 3.1(2e)A | FI-B: 3.1(2e)A | Catalog: 3.1(2f)T

The current firmware version only supported the B200 M4 blades. upgrade to our UCS environment to support some new B200 M5 (FW- 4.0.2) blades.

i.  what is the steps to upgrade 3.1(2e)A to 4.0(4i)?

ii. what is the steps of manual upgrade?

iii. What is the requirements to upgrade?

iv. how much time to take downtime for upgrade?

[Steven Tardy]

UCS 3.1(2x) to UCS 4.0(x) is a double upgrade:

1. Upgrade from UCS 3.1(2x) to UCS 3.1(3latest)
2. Upgrade from UCS 3.1(3latest) to UCS 4.0(4latest)

See:

  https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/ucs-manager/GUI-User-Guides/Firmware-Mgmt/4-0/b_UCSM_GUI_Firmware_Management_Guide_4-0/b_UCSM_GUI_Firmware_Management_Guide_4-0_chapter_010.html

Table 5. Upgrade Paths to Release 4.0

Upgrade From Release	Upgrade To Release	Recommended Upgrade Path
3.1(1), 3.1(2)	4.0(x)	Upgrading directly to Release 4.0(x) is not supported from this release. To upgrade to Release 4.0(x), do the following in order: Upgrade the Infrastructure A bundle to Release 3.1(3) or 3.2(x). Upgrade the B and C bundles for all servers to Release 3.1(3) or 3.2(x). Upgrade the Infrastructure A bundle to Release 4.0(x).

That same doc has section:

  Manage Firmware through Cisco UCS Manager

The Infrastructure (UCSM / Fabric Interconnects / IOMs) firmware upgrade can be done with the environment online, but "problems may happen" so should be done during a maintenance window.

The Server / Blade firmware upgrade will require rebooting each server, but that can be done one server at a time.

Usually an hour or two for infrastructure and about an hour per server if you do them one by one with a few reboots in between.