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VishnuN87
Contributor
Contributor

hp C7000 with hp proliant bl 460 Gen 9 upgrade to esx 7.0

Hi ALl,

 

Iam planning to upgrade my hp c7000 which are having 460c gen9 blade environment to esxi 7.0 from esxi 6.7. Iam planning to use custom iso image to upgrade so that the drivers and firmware also get updated for the blades.

 

Do i need to update the firmware on the enclosure and if there are blades which are not esxi in the same enclosure will it affect . Any one with experience with c7000 if can guide on the same.

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dduncan68
Contributor
Contributor

According to HPE the SPP and HPE Custom image must be:

Must maintain the Driver and FW Revisions from the 2021.10.1 SPP and the Jan 2022 HPE Custom ESXi 7.0U3 Image

dduncan68_0-1660912441294.png

https://vibsdepot.hpe.com/mapping/SPP-HPE_Custom-Image-vibsdepot-mapping-Gen9-later.pdf

Hope this helps.

Cheers

 

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robc_yk
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Proper firmware dependencies is important. As systems get more and more complex, follow the data path down the chain and confirm compatibilities is curtail for best performance. We even need to ensure that our Brocade firmware matches the SAN firmware, and then enclosures and then server compute and the operating system. Things are so dependent on each other now.

For the C7000 firmware, the OA (Onboard Administrator) and the VC (Virtual Connect - If using) they need to be within a compatible range with each other, this would also cover all of the interconnects within the C7000. You then need to ensure that your server compute (Blades) are also compatible as different firmware can enable the correct vSphere / ESX version compatibility.

If you are at a version that supports the ESX you want to move to already, then it is not critical to upgrade the C7000 and you can just do the blade firmware.

This document covers the ranges: SPP-HPE_Custom-Image-vibsdepot-mapping-Gen9-later.pdf

This site has the HPE ESX ISO: Using HPE Custom ESXi Images to Install ESXi on HPE ProLiant Servers | HPE

1: Ensure C7000 OA is compatible
2: Ensure interconnects and VC is compatible. (If your compute is configured correctly with multi pathing then there should be no downtime to compute)
3: update firmware on compute.
4: Update ESX using HPE SPP (I recommend updating the ILO first if possible through the OA or ILO webpage as it will allow you to fully watch the compute updates as they happen. You can also stage the BIOS and some other updates through ILO to further speed the process when working with multiple servers)

As for the older servers that are not going to ESX 7, they should be fine. Review the release notes as some firmware (HPE SPP) releases may not include drivers for certain NIC / HBA versions

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