firmware policy - to use or not to use?

[pvanlone1]

I believe a firmware policy is required for an auto install of a firmware bundle for servers, is that correct?

What about a manual install of firmware bundle for servers - if a server has a firmware policy, but it call out the older firmware, do I have to:

1)create a new policy to apply to the service profile, which points at the new firmware? or,

2)update the existing policy with the new firmware, or

3)Can I simply ignore the policy and do a manual apply of the new firmware?

[Manuel Velasco · Accepted solution]

I believe a firmware policy is required for an auto install of a firmware bundle for servers, is that correct?  If you are doing auto install the system will update the default host firmware policy and used that policy to upgrade the firmware of the blades.

What about a manual install of firmware bundle for servers - if a server has a firmware policy, but it call out the older firmware, do I have to:

1)create a new policy to apply to the service profile, which points at the new firmware? or,

2)update the existing policy with the new firmware, or

3)Can I simply ignore the policy and do a manual apply of the new firmware?

If you  have an existing host firmware policy you can just update it to the version that you need, but note that as soon as you make the changes it will apply it to the servers and the servers will try to reboot to complete the firmware upgrade.

If you want to do a manual firmware upgrade, then you will need to remove the host firmware package before you upgrade the servers as it won't let you overwrite the policy if the service profiles are using this policy.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[pvanlone1]

ok thank you very much. 

To clarify further just a bit:

If the service profiles have a maintenance policy that is user ack - is it then safe to modify the existing host profile? I assume the system will still automatically update the "startup version", and set the old firmware to "backup version" and then when we CHOOSE to ack the process, the servers will reboot? And we can control this on a server to server basis. Correct?

If I remove a host firmware package from a service profile - does the server have to reboot to make that change take effect?

If I have service profiles that DO NOT now have a host firmware policy - if I assign one, will the server have to reboot before the policy will work, or ... will it be active immediately?

Thank you so much, again - the number of options is so great, it makes my head spin as I read through all the docs!

[Manuel Velasco · Accepted solution]

If the service profiles have a maintenance policy that is user ack - is it then safe to modify the existing host profile? Yes if the maintenance policy is set to user-ack, a pending activity for server reboot will be created

I assume the system will still automatically update the "startup version", and set the old firmware to "backup version" and then when we CHOOSE to ack the process, the servers will reboot? And we can control this on a server to server basis. Correct? Yes this correct for both questions

If I remove a host firmware package from a service profile - does the server have to reboot to make that change take effect? No, this action doesn't required for the server to reboot.

If I have service profiles that DO NOT now have a host firmware policy - if I assign one, will the server have to reboot before the policy will work, or ... will it be active immediately?  Same as the first question, if the policy that you apply is upgrading/downgrading the firmware it will require a reboot (it will reboot immediately if no maintenance policy with user-ack is associated with the service profile), if the policy that you apply is not changing the firmware on the server it will not require for the server to reboot.

[pvanlone1]

excellent - you have been very helpful, thank you much!

[Walter Dey]

My 2c

- Host firmware packages (HFP) allow update of server BIOS, CIMC, I/O adaptor with one reboot.

- a update from V2 to 2.1 or 2.2 creates a "default" HFP, which is empty;

- in V2.1 and 2.2 if you have service profiles without a HFP, the "default" HFP applies; strange: the default becomes the "default"

- If you modify the "default" HFP, it has positive and negative effects: eg. new or swapped blades can be synched with the default HFP; however, any Service profile without a HFP will be using the default HFP; hopefully you have maintenance policy with ACK in place, otherwise ....

[pvanlone1]

interesting and helpful to know about the behavior of the "default" HFP.

If I use a custom HFP (not default) to update each of the servers with Service Profiles, then - is it possible to use the default HFP to update servers that are not yet deployed (i.e. don't have a service profile association)? 

Or is the only way to update these unassigned servers to use the auto install procedure, and/or to associate them with a service profile that has a HFP attached to it?

[Walter Dey]

If you have a default HFP, which contains e.g. 2.2.3 content, (remember the default "default" is empty and therefore has no effect, you can change this manually, or during a autoinstall server), then any blades which are not associated will be updated accordingly; same if you insert new chassis and/or blades, if you set the global policy to synch the firmware.

Caution: any service profile, which has no reference to a HFP, will use the default "default", which is not a problem, if its empty.

Hope I clarified your question.

Thanks Walter.