Walter,
You can safetly remove the Management firmware package. Before UCSM 2.1 version, there were two different policies for blade upgrade. We had firmware packages to upgrade BIOS, adapter, etc and a Managment firmware package for Blade CIMC upgrade. In UCSM 2.1 all these components can be upgraded directly from the host firmware package and Management firmware policy is not required. UCS no longer supports the creation of management firmware package but you can modify or update existing one, if you want. But recommendation is to remove management firmware package from all service profiles and use host firmware package to update CIMC on servers.
Q: What happens when I remove the Management Firmware Policy from the SP ?
A. When you remove Management Firmware policy the blade would remain at its existing CIMC version. If the Host firmware package is in place then it will kick in and update the CIMC according to the host firmware package
Q. will the HFP kick in, and update CIMC ?
A. The host firmware package should automatically kick in and start upgrading the CIMC. If for some reason it doesn't, you can either upgrade the CIMC manually or just re-apply the host firmware package.
Q. Is this non disruptive (no server boot); only CIMC has to be updated, the rest is already ok
A. if only CIMC has to be updated then it should be non-disruptive. All data paths should remain online and no reboot is required. However, all KVM session to that specific blade would be unavailable during the upgrade.
If UCSM evaluates that a component such as BIOS or adapter needs to be updated, then it should give you a warning before a reboot as long as the maintenance policy is set to user-ack for the service profile.
Ali
