[OmniOS-discuss] Ang: Rolling FW upgrade on LSI 9207

[Stephan Budach]

Hi Johan,

Am 22.01.15 um 10:39 schrieb Johan Kragsterman:
> Hi!
>
>
>
> -----"OmniOS-discuss" <omnios-discuss-bounces at lists.omniti.com> skrev: -----
> Till: <omnios-discuss at lists.omniti.com>
> Från: Stephan Budach
> Sänt av: "OmniOS-discuss"
> Datum: 2015-01-22 09:50
> Ärende: [OmniOS-discuss] Rolling FW upgrade on LSI 9207
>
> Hi guys,
>
> I do have two zpools of mirrored vdevs, where each vdev is spread over two LSI 9207-8i HBAs. Is it possible to perform a round-robin FW upgrade on the LSI HBAs, without rebooting the box? I'd like to keep the zpools up while I am performing the upgrade and I thought of breaking the mirrors, performing the FW upgrade on the first 9207, re-attaching the devices and doing the same again for the other half of the zpools vdevs.
>
> Has anyone done this before, or is a host reboot mandantory?
>
>
>
> Stephan!
>
> As I said before, I would NEVER put myself, and my infrastructure services, in the position where I couldn't find a maintanance window to take it down, to perform a firmware upgrade.
>
> IMHO, there are too much that can go wrong, and if it goes wrong....well, then you're in big trouble...
Yeah - I do know that, but it happens, that I don't have a choice at 
this time. Also, I didn't say, that I couldn't take down the whole 
server, but I'd rather avoid that. I also don't see any issues with my 
request, despite that I don't know, if a FW upgrade on the HBA, along 
with a subsequent reset of that same HBA will suffice, or if the mpt 
driver will go crazy on me for that.
I am well experienced with ZFS to perform the rest without expecting any 
issues related to ZFS. I will certainly announce a maintenance window 
for this action, anyway. This NGS store hosts over 60 VMs.
>
> If you couldn't even afford to take it down for a firmware upgrade, how would you handle a major problem with firmware or bricked HBA's? Bad things happens now and then, especially when you're not prepared for them...
Well… it depends on the level of preparation you are willing - are able 
- to put in. This host gets backed up via zfs send/recv each 4th hour, 
so it's not, that I am completely unprepared. However, this is a 
transision phase for us and we are planning for HA in the coming months.

Thanks,
budy