Firmware upgrade on UCS 5108 and M2, M4, M5 servers

[PermanentStudent]

Hi,

I am new to UCS and trying to upgrade the firmware which are running a numbers of Vmware VMs..

I need an advise on where to start first?  

I have 1x5108 and 2x 5108 AC2 on firmware version as shown below

And the three servers B models are:

UCSB-B200-M5

UCSB-B200-M4

UCSB-B230-M2

And FI model 

What would be latest version supported on these models? If anyone could be provide an step by step short guide, thanks 

[Steven Tardy]

See this compiled list of versions for UCS:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CiscoUCS/comments/167enqu/cisco_ucs_releases_components_supported_and_ldos/

UCS 4.0(x) drops support for M2, so the latest UCS with those M2 will be UCSM 3.2(3p).

[PermanentStudent]

thanks, Steven, all three chassis are managed via a single UCSM, now does it mean I can upgrade the UCS manager to the latest and then keep the BIOS version of M2 to what it is and only upgrade M4, and M5?  what about the FI models? what would look like each firmware version for these parts? 

[Riaan van Niekerk]

To expand on what Steven said: We followed the same reasoning as you, and our upgrade failed: When trying to upgrade to 4.3 (which drops support for M4) usin Auto Install, UCSM upgrades, however then downgrades/rolls back to the previous version. The upgrade worked flawlessly as soon as we physically removed the last M4 (just decommissioning them in UCSM is not sufficient since the UCSM DB still knows about it). 

NB: There is minimal risk when/if the upgrade fails, since it affects the management plane during the upgrade/downgrade, and not the data plane. 

[Steven Tardy]

UCSM 4.0 with M2 blades will NOT be happy.
All things (UCSM/FI/IOMs/servers/VICs) will need to stay with 3.2(3p) firmware bundles.

If you need/want to upgrade past 3.2(3p) firmware, then the M2 blades will need to be removed completely.