HP ProLiant Gen9 Advisory - SmartArray Firmware Update

[kevo12]

Hi all,

We reviewed the below advisory from HP regarding the Smart Array controllers on Gen9 servers.
http://h20566.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c04805565&jumpid=em_alerts_us-us_Sep15_xbu_...

The advisory states:

An HP ProLiant Gen9 server may stop responding and on the reboot, will display the following 1719 POST error message:
1719-Slot 0 Drive Array - A controller failure event occurred prior to this power-up. (Previous lock up code = 0x13)

Even though we have not seen any failures, we began testing the firmware update (3.02) and it completely bombed our 1st server; it's stuck at POST.  We had the Linux guys perform the upgrade on there server and although it appears to have applied successfully, the firmware version never changed to 3.02. We have a case open with HP and are awaiting feedback, but in the meantime, i wanted to see if anyone else has pushed this FW update out to their ESXi5.5 Gen9 servers with the Smart Array controller.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[FinnurGudmundss]

We were hit by this flaw on the only BL460c G9 we run that is not ESXi host 🙂 - running Windows 2012. HP sent us a link with the fix an hour after we opened up the case.

After applying the fix (we did it from Windows) the issue went away as quickly as it appeared.

Hope you will get your boxes fixed. I recommend you open up a ticket if you are having problems applying it.

Bgrds,

Finnur

[kevo12]

Thanks for the reply Finnur.
We think we have isolated this issue down to the fact the were are also using the SAS expander card (727250-B21) with the Raid Controller (we have 26 local disk). In our testing, applying the recommended firmware on servers with this configuration will cause the server to freeze at post. The work around for us was to disconnect the SAS expanded, power on/off server, then reconnect the expander card. Doing these steps did get the server back online. HP is still investigating root cause.

thanks,

Kev

[kevo12 · Accepted solution]

Just a follow-up here..

The issue was isolated to the SmartArray P440 with the 12G SAS expander card. The fix was to update both the SmartArray and the Expander card firmware at the same time. Updating the P440 firmware alone caused our system to not POST

thanks,

Kev