WLC 5520 CIMC upgrade

cmarva · ‎05-25-2021

One of our 5520 controllers crapped out, and after some research it was due to the CIMC firmware being old and the flex flash not being enabled. I followed the instructions in bug notes for CSCvo33873 and got through the firmware upgrade.

what I am seeing now is, when I watch the controller boot, is it hangs at Cisco bootloader loading stage 2. So the wlc is not coming online.

my questions are:

1 - has anyone upgraded the CIMC firmware on a 5520 WLC (c220-m4)

2 - if so, do I also need to go back into the HUU and click "upgrade HDD" as part of this?

3 - if not, has anyone seen a 5520 hang at this point after upgrading the CIMC firmware?

thanks, chris

cmarva · ‎05-25-2021

ok, I guess that is normal behavior while watching the KVM console. The WLC eventually did come back online and is reachable. It took a while, longer than I am used to, but I think that everything is ok.

Leo Laohoo · ‎05-25-2021

@cmarva wrote:

has anyone upgraded the CIMC firmware on a 5520 WLC (c220-m4)

I have upgraded the CIMC of my fleet of 8540. (Although the 5520 and 8540 are physically different, the CIMC procedure are the same.)

Here are some gotchas:

The biggest mistake anyone can do is read the Cisco documentation about CIMC upgrade. Why? Because the Cisco procedure is not just wrong but incomplete. Anyone who have never done a CIMC upgrade and read the Cisco documentation will be royally ~~FUBAR~~ confused.
@Rasika Nayanajith has knocked up a very comprehensive CIMC upgrade procedure and can be found HERE or HERE (HA).
Lastly, CIMC upgrade will take between 65 to 75 minutes. During this time frame, the entire box is powered off.

cmarva · ‎05-26-2021

Thanks Leo, I appreciate it. As this was the first time I've been through this, i guess it was more unknowns than anything. But to your points,

1-yeah, to me it seemed more incomplete than anything but now that I've been through it once, I know what to expect.

2-thanks for the pointer to this, very nice link

3-yep, did seem to take a while, especially for the HUU to load, as i was doing it via kvm mapping.

again, I appreciate it

chris

jcosgrove · ‎12-06-2022

I have an 8540 running older 2.0(10b) CIMC code. It seems to require flash and i tried a number of newer plugin containers on Firefox and Chrome with no success. Any suggestions? I am able to access via the CLI is there a procedure to upgrade from the CLI?

Thanks for any advice.

Leo Laohoo · ‎12-09-2022

Find a computer/laptop with Win 7.