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PTEastvale
Contributor
Contributor

HP EVA firmware upgrade (ONLINE)

All of my 16 ESX hosts in my enviroment are running 4.0 U1 connected to a central vCenter server. All of hots connect to the 2 HP EVA 4400 via FC. I would like to update HP EVA 4400 from 09522000 to firmware 09534000. Currently, i am only one revision behind.

I understand that HP allows online firwmare upgrade as long as all of of the connected hosts can support 60 seconds window of I/O storage disconnect. All of Windows VMs have that set up in the registry already. Is there a setting for ESX set for this I/O timeout?

Has anyone successfully performed an online firmware upgrade on HP EVA 4400 without shutting anything down? I would hate to shut everything down again to perform this upgrade (we did it last time and it was a big pain to inform the whole world about this).

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TheEsp
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi

In order to pull this off it requires you working along side your storage guy/team if your it then here's what to check off first.

1. Do you have dual reduant fiber channel fabrics

2. Are you storage controllers and server split across these two fabrics.

3.Are you hosts running proper pathing software eg. HDS HDLM , EMC PowerPath , MPIO.

4.Are you VMware hosts using the correct pathing policy to connect back to your EVA (confirm this with HP)

It's a time consuming tasks but if you don't get it right and you do the upgrade live even for 60sec could cause data corruption or lose. BTW you would also want to do this at low I/O times.

Good luck

AWo
Immortal
Immortal

Please check closely with your HP consultant regarding a complete power off of the EVA and the disk shelves. When we did the update to 09534000 they recommended a complete power off.


AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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PTEastvale
Contributor
Contributor

All of our setups here are redundant. We have dual fiber ports coming from each ESX hosts and the EVA 4400's dual controllers each connect to the respective ESX fiber ports. They have all been tested to work properly with one EVA controller down.

Our local HP engineer recommends that any firmware upgrade or addition of a disk shelf should be done with the unit power off. However, the EVA was sold based on the premise that it doesn't need to be shut off during the firmware upgrade. As a matter of fact, the documention states that it can be done online but most of the HP field engineers recommend to do this while with the unit off.

We have 2 HP MSA 2012i storage server (iSCSI based) and we were able to perform online firmware upgrades. I am just wondering why a higher end storage unit with redundant gears have to be shut off every 3 months to perform these maintenance upgrades.

Has anyone attempted to do HP EVA firmware upgrade online?

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AWo
Immortal
Immortal

You can do that online. You can upgrade each controller one after the other. The thing we were asked to do is to remove power from the disk shelves, as well. Then even running controllers don't help. As you already stated, powering off is an advice by HP engineers. We followed the advice, because this downtime can be planned. Problems which may occur when you haven't powered it off can't be planned.

It's up to you if you do what is possible or if you do what HP experts recommend.

If you can't have a downtime teh question is already answered.


AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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=Would you like to have this posting as a ringtone on your cell phone?=

=Send "Posting" to 911 for only $999999,99!=

vExpert 2009/10/11 [:o]===[o:] [: ]o=o[ :] = Save forests! rent firewood! =
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