Recommendations on firmware upgrades for various components

[lpallard]

Hi there,

So I am finishing up 2 server’s upgrades and before I start installing stuff on them, I am wondering if upgrading the various firmwares and BIOS’es is recommended. Most chipsets are running factory firmwares or some are older than a year… I am hoping to improve stability and have new features but at the same time I do not want to add new bugs or risk bricking or destroying data (such as RAID arrays) so feedback from experienced people is what I seek. I know for a fact that Supermicro recommends NOT flashing firmwares if no problems are experienced. That’s a conservative approach which provides stability, but is keeping old firmwares just as good?

Overall, and outside of hard drive firmwares, there would be 7 chipsets to upgrade.

Server 1 (Supermicro | Products | Chassis | 3U | SC836TQ-R800V / SC836TQ-R800B)

Motherboard BIOS (Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Xeon Boards | X7DBE+)

This is an older Supermicro X7DBE+ motherboard and probably runs an older BIOS or even factory (?) BIOS. Is it recommended to upgrade even if no problems are seen or expected?

Opinions?

IPMI firmware

Same as BIOS.

Backplane

Nowhere on Supermicro’s website I could find a firmware upgrade for the BPN-SAS-836TQ backplane in this chassis so I assume that firmware cannot be upgraded. Am I right? If not, should and how can I upgrade the firmware? Is it recommended? If upgrading is with little to no benefit then I’ll pass..

M1015 adapters

There are 2 adapters in this machine and both are running firmwares that are at least 1 year old (or more) and one of them is still in IR mode. I want to run both adapters in IT (JBOD) mode for a ZFS pool. Should I bother upgrading their firmwares to latest? First adapter was already flashed last year to IT mode so I assume the firmware was upgraded at the same time. Should I ensure both adapters are running same firmware?

Stupid question: When I flash their firmware to IT, how can I select the adapter A or B? Will it ask me?

Server 2


Motherboard BIOS (Supermicro Products: Aplus Motherboards H8DCL-iF)

This is a supermicro H8DCL-iF and still runs factory BIOS (3.0a) but 3.5 is out and I wonder if it would be beneficial to flash? Do I risk major problems? The only glitch that happened and that *may* have been related to BIOS was a major issue with a Linux raid array that went berserk about 8 months ago. All drives were connected to mobo SATA ports so Supermicro recommended to wait for a newer BIOS release to flash but I haven’t seen this occurrence since then so I am not sure if the flash risk is worth it…

Opinions?

M5016 firmware

This is the one that worries me the most. I DO NOT want to brick this 400$ adapter… Its running firmware ???? which is almost a year old.. It is being used as a RAID controller (not JBOD) so I worry about losing my RAID arrays. Other than the fact that it complains (if I shutdown & unplug the server for 5minutes+) that the adapter is running in write-through mode because capacitor is discharged/missing, I don’t have any other problems. If flashing is advised, can you tell me how to proceed with explicit details?


Boatload (9) of hard drives

All SATA, a mixture of Hitachi’s deskstars, Seagate Barracuda’s and a few WD Caviars… All SATA2 or 3 and all 2TB’s. Is it worth spending time upgrading their FW? There is NO data on them so data loss is NOT a concern.

Looking forward to hear your recommendations!

Cheers and thanks all!

 

[Chuckleb]

I usually do not update hard drive firmware, I have so many drives that to keep that up with it take forever. For motherboards, I try to update if I am doing a major overhaul. Likewise for raid cards.

We are in the midst of building out new storage systems and as part of that we are upgrading all firmware on raid cards and motherboards. Oh, and also all InfiniBand cards. We have had pretty good luck on these upgrades and have never bricked one. Of course there is always a first...

 

[lpallard]

Sounds like I may opt to upgrade some of them but not all... You are right with hard drives... If you got a LOT its almost a pain to maintain...

For the backplane, I wonder what to do? YOu got an idea?

What about the M5016 controller? Nowhere I could find a step by step procedure to upgrade its firmware, and I recall having seen on this very forum some folks who reported major issues with the newest FW's from IBM...

Finally, the M1015 are kinda straight forward but I will research on how to flash only one of them.

Thanks for your reply Chuckleb!

 

[Chuckleb]

I've never updated backplane firmware so don't have a clue on that one. I like to review changelogs before updating, the LSI changelogs are huge. Many vendors don't list what is changed so I always wonder.

Usually flashing cards, I try to pull them out and put them on a dedicated workbench computer. For LSI cards, you can flash them from within a running OS, which I tried for the first time. That worked really well actually, here is what I did for my 9271 card. I think the /c0 specifies which controller to flash so you could use that to flash each one.

[root@basement firmware]# /opt/MegaRAID/storcli/storcli64 /c0 download file=mr2208fw.rom
Download Completed.
Flashing image to adapter...
Controller = 0
Status = Success
Description = F/W Flash Completed. Please reboot the system for the changes to take effect

Current FW version = 3.240.05-2282
New FW version = 3.400.45-3507

[root@basement firmware]#

I've flashed m1015s using LSI 9211 firmware from the LSI website and that worked well. I could try that tomorrow when I get to work and can pull a spare card out. If you're comfortable with the way the M5016 is running, I'd maybe just leave it alone. The 9271 flash was a hot flash with a running array but I had lots of backups (3x copies) and had just built the array. I wanted to test it once to see how it ran.

The IB cards we are flashing since we need them to be at latest in order to get Flexboot working, that is what prompted that flash.

I'll try to remember to do the m1015 to a few different BIOSes and see how it runs. I can grab a spare card and do two as well...

 

[lpallard]

My main concern is impede stability or worst, destroy my array by upgrading the M5016 firmware..

Its currently running and hosting a proxmox node with 8 VM's...

The M1015s are NOT running, they will be put in service some time next week as part of a major server overhaul.

I can afford to take a bigger risk on the M1015's than the M5016..

Seems you flashed the 9271 card from a running Linux system. what did you install to have storcli64 utility? I only have megacli on my proxmox node (debian).

 

[Chuckleb]

You can get StorCli from LSI's website.

StorCLI Download

This is a pretty nice guide comparing the two and showing the transition.
http://mycusthelp.info/LSI/_cs/AnswerPreview.aspx?sSessionID=&inc=8275

I should really consider migrating my lsitools over to storcli at some point, easier to understand flags.

 

[vegaman]

I've updated with 2 cards installed before, the -c flag allows you to choose which card you want to flash. I'd recommend flashing them to the same version.
I'd personally update anything that isn't in use yet. And only update the others if you're facing issues or rebuilding or something.

 

[mrkrad]

i'd be careful flashing chargeable battery with cross-flash. IBM might be rocking custom battery/supercap design that is not "LSI" standard! IBM is pretty solid on firmware upgrades if you are going to keep it legit (IBM -> IBM)! Just be sure to match up the driverset version to the bios revision level or else!

 

[lpallard]

Flashed the two M1015's without problems , flashed the X7DBE+'s bios and daughter IPMI card firmware to latest also w/o problem, so I believe this little Supermicro chassis is updated to latest !

Running memtest as we "speak"...

Will post back if necessary, otherwise, I will be attacking the other server with the newer H8DCL-iF mobo and the M5016.. Once I complete backups and I can safely afford playing with it.

mrkrad, of course, I will flash the M5016 with IBM's firmware, but the problem is which one? I will search on IBM's site and try to find the right one..

"I'd personally update anything that isn't in use yet. And only update the others if you're facing issues or rebuilding or something."

That was the key: flash the system not in use, if OK, backup the other one to the first, then flash the second one.