Firmware Upgrade for HP/QLogic ISP2432-based 4Gb FC HBA

[RoscoT]

Hello,

I'm a little confused as to what I need to do to get my firmware up to date for my HP ESXi hosts' HBAs.

In vCenter the HBAs are listed as: ISP2432-based 4Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA

When I do a cat /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/7 I see:

QLogic PCI to Fibre Channel Host Adapter for HPAE312A: FC Firmware version 5.03.15 (496), Driver version 901.k1.1-14vmw

BIOS version 2.02
FCODE version 2.00
EFI version 2.00
Flash FW version 4.03.02
ISP: ISP2432

Looking on the VMware HCL I see the following listed for ESXi 5.0 Update 2 (the version I'm using):

Product: VMware ESXi 5.x FC-FCoE Driver for QLogic and OEM-branded Fibre Channel and Converged Network Adapters.

Version: 934.5.6.0-1vmw

Downloading that driver I see in the release notes:

Changes made between versions 911.k1.1-17vmw and 911.k1.1-18vmw:
* Update ISP24XX and ISP25XX firmware to 5.06.02

Question: Do I simply have to install this VIB to get my HBA firmware to the latest level or do I also need to flash the HBA firmware when the ESXi host is booting up too?

TIA

[norregaard · Accepted solution]

Updating the VIB will both upgrade the firmware and the driver at the same time.

/jakob

[RoscoT]

Thanks for the reply Jakob. In the end I managed to isolate a host and install the vib which, as you mention, updated both the firmware and the driver from an ESXi perspective.

It would be different if you were booting from SAN as then you'd need to update the firmware in the actual card itself but in my environment the vib install was sufficient.