My bad, this is what was actually happening: The OA firmware management somehow mangled the update, specifically of the emulex driver, which made it unusable and almost un-updatable Only way...
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My bad, this is what was actually happening: The OA firmware management somehow mangled the update, specifically of the emulex driver, which made it unusable and almost un-updatable Only way to put the emulex CNA's back in a working state seems to be by using the OneConnect flash iso (OneConnect-Flash-4.9.311.20.iso) available here: http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=co_128972_1 Once back in a working state, the latest SPP (2015.10 at this time) can be mounted with the remote console to perform the update. Once done, and even with the latest Emulex v10.5.155.0 firmware, ESXi 5.5u3 HP runs fine. One signal that the emulex firmware is corrupted is the repeated firmware boot message (which should only appear once) :