How to keep Proliant FW/SW/drivers current between SPP releases?

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Tim

Member
Nov 7, 2012
105
6
18
Not sure if this is the right subforum, but I need some best practices advice on how to keep my server up to date.

I've been in this industry for the last ~20 years, mainly as a software developer but had my years doing server support too way back in the late 90s. Now I'm a freelance devloper and I needed my own server to both play with and develop/test on.

Server is the HPE Proliant DL380 Gen9.
I'm running ESXi 6.5U1 from this custom HPE image:
VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-Update1-5969303-HPE-650.U1.10.1.0.14-Jul2017.iso
And I've installed the 2017.07.1 SPP from here:
Service Pack for ProLiant | Hewlett Packard Enterprise
I installed this via iLO remote console as a mounted image that I booted from and did an offline automatic update.

I also get emails with support alerts but most of them seems to be for hardware that I don't have in my spesific server edition. And ESXi 6.5 is not on the list of supported OS'es for at least the iLO4 firmware install package (which was not updated with the SPP) as far as I can tell.

I'm reading that the SPP is supposed to come in a base edition and a full edition. The latter is supposed to include all updates (firmware/drivers) since the base release date. Or I can download and patch the SPP with a Maintenance Supplement Bundle (MSB), I can't find any such MSB since 2015? Or patch the SPP with a Firmware Supplemental Updates package, I can't find that either. And there's plenty of updates since the 2017.07.1 SPP so I guess that's a base SPP.

According to the custom ESXi image release notes, running the mentioned ESXi on SPP 2017.07.1 does not require any other driver/software updates. Still I think I want/need/should install newer firmware/driver/software that is mentioned in my support alerts.

HPE Systems Insight Manager, seems like what I'm after but I only have this one server and it's already running ESXi so I don't know if that would be an option for me at all.

The humble questions
- How do you keep your firmware and drivers updated between SPP releases?
- Do I need to download a custom SPP to get a pre-updated SPP after 2017.07.1?
- Do you use vmware update manager to keep ESXi updated too, or just wait for a new HPE custom image?
- Do you run the SPP on each vm to deploy updated drivers for the spesific OS too?

Any feedback here is very appreciated!
 

Tim

Member
Nov 7, 2012
105
6
18
Just a quick update here after some googling. Why is this info so hard to find on their site?

Since I'm running the HPE image of ESXi it should have all the tools installed (WBEM/CIM based). But as far as I can tell there's no plugin for the ESXi webclient to give me what I want from within the ESXi itself.

All I can see is info on using SIM, but that's more like for multiple servers? And needs licensing and run on other expensive software? Then there was HPE Insight Control, but that needed HPE Insight Management which in turn relied on SIM? And again not running on ESXi. I got lost on the jungle that HPE webpages following clues on how to install this.

Then there's SMH, System Management Homepage, and this seems to be what I'm looking for. But not supported on ESXi?
Can this be safely run from a Windows Server 2016 vm on my ESXi 6.5 and update FW/SW/drivers for the whole system?

Also there's a bug in HPEs custom exi 6.5U1 image. After installation it triggers HPQSA0305 service events on the server. Nonsense, since it triggers all SATA disks in the system at once. And everything is reported just fine if I install the old 6.5.0 image. Well, at least it did, now it complains that it's lacking the CIM provider for the storage adapter (more nonsense). I'm losing confidence in the HPE vmware images, but I don't have the time right now to mess with making a custom vanilla install.