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GeneNZ
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MD3000i Firmware Upgrades on vSphere

Hi there,

Currently we have several MD3000i SANs that need to have their firmware upgraded (RAID controller and Physical disk firmware) to the latest versions (07352261 for the RAID controller). These SANs are connected to PowerEdge 2950's running the latest vSphere environment. I've done a bit of research and from what I can gather, the key is really:

- Backup all your data.

- Shutdown the vSphere Physical Servers.

- Use the provided crossgeneration utility to upgrade the SAN.

Does anyone have any experience or tips related to upgrading the MD3000i SANs? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Gene

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azn2kew
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It depends if you still want your VMs to be online, if plan accordingly you will have a good upgrade without downtime, I did was 15 x 400GB MD3000i upgrade firmware to 7.xx version but has to promote a cheap shared NFS/iSCSI storage using OpenFiler and use Storage VMotion to move the VMs around as a staging destination. Once the upgrade has been completed, migrate them back and remove or repurpose your Openfiler or keep it for low key development servers. You may move to local disk if you want just for temporary but can't do any VMotion/HA though. You may want to use trial version virtual storage appliance like SANmelody or Lefthand's Network for better performance and portability reason. Otherwise, if you afforded to power them off just perform quick upgrade with planned downtime should be fine. Good luck.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA

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AndreTheGiant
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I do not power-off the ESX.

Simple I power-off all the VM on the MD3000 or MD3000i.

Or use SVmotion to move them to local storage or other shared storage.

And I do this kind of upgrade only when is really needed.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
azn2kew
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It depends if you still want your VMs to be online, if plan accordingly you will have a good upgrade without downtime, I did was 15 x 400GB MD3000i upgrade firmware to 7.xx version but has to promote a cheap shared NFS/iSCSI storage using OpenFiler and use Storage VMotion to move the VMs around as a staging destination. Once the upgrade has been completed, migrate them back and remove or repurpose your Openfiler or keep it for low key development servers. You may move to local disk if you want just for temporary but can't do any VMotion/HA though. You may want to use trial version virtual storage appliance like SANmelody or Lefthand's Network for better performance and portability reason. Otherwise, if you afforded to power them off just perform quick upgrade with planned downtime should be fine. Good luck.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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GeneNZ
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Thanks for the information,

I have just recently setup one openfiler SAN and simple ESXi server to hold a backup domain controller and a Backup Exchange SCR. Unfortunately, we had to use a quad-core desktop for the ESXi backup machine, because we don't have any further ESXi "server-quality" hardware, and the VM's require VT on the CPU (they are 64bit). Call me snobby, but I think that production VM's running on a desktop is a little bit flakey (although the openfiler machine has been working relatively well lately). Regardless, we've scheduled downtime for a particular weekend. At the same time, we need to physically rearrange the hardware in our racks to cater for greater expansion to our virtual infrastructure, so downtime is required regardless.

Thanks for your help, and any further ideas, tips or gotcha's that would be helpful for upgrading then powering down the MD3000i would still be much appreciated.

Gene

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Zel123
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Thanks a lot, this really is a truly awsome article! I had a good experience filling forms online and happy to share it with you. I just filled out DA 31 with an online software. It looked much better typed than hand-written. I used http://pdf.ac/aPRD0i and it's very easy to use.

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