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New HP Blade Onboard Administrator 3.55 Firmware released

April 4th, 2012

HP has released two new firmware updates for its blade chassis, 3.50 and 3.55.

These were both released on the same day.

3.50 was released to support Gen 8 blades and is required before you insert any Gen 8 blades into your enclosure (along with having Virtual Connect 3.51). There are also a lot of other fixes. You will also need to update HP SIM to at least 6.3 to be able to discover OAs from 3.30 up.

3.55 was released on the same day as it seems testing missed some issues with authentication and EBIPA (great!) so I’m not sure why 3.50 was released at all. Confusingly the release notes and fixes for 3.55 include all the information from 3.50 so its not immediately obvious what the difference is.

So, no point really even looking at 3.50 but rather going straight for 3.55 which can be downloaded from:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=3188465&swItem=MTX-1ee4cda0b03447c6974e4ca184&prodNameId=3188475&swEnvOID=4040&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=3

Enhancements/New Features

  • Hardware Support
    • HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 Server Blades
  • Firmware Additions
    • The Gen8 Active Health System provides a log of historical information including the most recent states and events for Gen8 servers.  This log is obtained from Gen8 Server Blades via iLO4.  When enabled via the OA GUI or CLI, the OA adds status information about enclosure fans, power supplies, and enclosure configuration to the health log for each of the servers in the enclosure.
    • HP ProLiant BladeSystem c-Class server blades now provides identification information such as server name, UUID number, and IP address to the Intelligent PDU and to HP Insight Control power management software. To utilize this feature, the new “HP BLc 1PH Intelligent Power Module” and Insight Control Version 7.0 or later are required. This Intelligent Power Discovery feature which is unique ProLiant BladeSystem c-Class reduces the amount of time needed to configure the power distribution software and hardware, and eliminates manual configuration errors.
    • iLO and VC each display information about server NIC configurations.  However, the naming scheme used varies based on the tool used to view the configuration.  The OA NIC display has been enhanced to correlate NIC labels between the OA, iLO and VC.
    • OA 3.50 or later increases the default SSL private key size used for encryption of network communication from 1024 bits to 2048 bits.
    • Updated OA to use the June 27, 2011 time zone data files. The list of newly supported time zones includes:
      • America\Argentina\Salta
      • America\Bahia_Banderas
      • America\Kralendijk
      • America\Lower_Princes
      • America\Matamoros
      • America\Metlakatla
      • America\North_Dakota\Beulah
      • America\Ojinaga
      • America\Santa_Isabel
      • America\Sitka
      • Antarctica\Macquarie
      • Asia\Kathmandu
      • Asia\Novokuznetsk
      • Pacific\Chuuk
      • Pacific\Pohnpei

Important Notes

  • HP Gen8 Blade Support
    • OA 3.30, OA 3.31 and OA 3.32 will correctly power up and perform the initial configuration of Gen8 Server Blades.  However, when used with Virtual Connect, subsequent configuration changes to the network and storage profiles may not be handled properly resulting in incorrect port configurations.  OA 3.50 is required for use with Virtual Connect and Gen8 blades.  For more details, refer to the Customer Advisory (ID= c03246192) Onboard Administrator and Virtual Connect – HP ProLiant Gen8 Server Blades Require Onboard Administrator Firmware Version 3.50 (or Later) and Virtual Connect Firmware Version 3.51 (or Later):http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c03246192.
    • Correct configuration of HP ProLiant Gen8 server blades requires updating the Onboard Administrator to version 3.50 or later and Virtual Connect to version 3.51 or later before inserting your ProLiant Gen8 server blade into an enclosure. Failure to upgrade the OA before inserting a Gen8 blade in the enclosure will result in a profile pending status with Virtual Connect.
    • Versions of the OA prior to OA 3.30 will not properly configure Gen8 server blades and should not be used.
  • HP SIM Support
    • Version 6.1 and 6.2 of HP SIM do not discover and associate enclosures running OA versions 3.30 or later.  If you are running HP SIM v6.1 or 6.2, please do not update to OA 3.30 or later until you’ve applied all patches available for your HP SIM version, or upgrade your HP SIM to v6.3 prior to upgrading your OA environment. If running versions of HP SIM prior to v6.1, you must upgrade to HP SIM v6.3 or later prior to upgrading to OA 3.50 or later.
  • Enclosure Power Subsystem
    • Onboard Administrator detects power supplies within the scope of Customer Advisory c01519680 and flags them with a “Red X” critical error condition and displays the message: “HP strongly recommends replacing power supply #X at the customer’s earliest possible convenience pursuant to Customer Advisory c01519680.” Flagged power supplies continue to function and the enclosure remains operational. See Customer Advisory c01519680 for more information:http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01519680.
  • Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping
    • Caution: Onboard Administrator v3.10 or later: Enabling Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping may result in one of the following:
      • Servers halted in POST after a reboot and status Degraded due to “Insufficient Enclosure Power”
      • A server may be unable to power on

      This condition can be a result of reducing the Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping after all server blades are powered on. If the enclosure Power Available is lower than the iLO Advanced report of Initial Power-On Request Value from a server blade – then that server blade could encounter this issue. The workaround is to increase the Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping to provide more power available to the enclosure devices.

    • With Enclosure Dynamic Power Capping enabled, changes to power supplies, input power feeds, power redundancy mode, power capping, power limit and the power state of other blades and devices in the enclosure may affect the ability to power on a server blade or reboot a server blade. HP recommends testing a fully configured enclosure from a completely powered-off state before finalizing the enclosure power settings.
  • VLAN
    • If the Enclosure VLAN feature is enabled:
      1. Ensure that all HP Virtual Connect Ethernet and Virtual Connect FC interconnect modules are configured with the same management VLAN as the Onboard Administrator modules.
      2. Ensure all enclosures with Virtual Connect multi-enclosure domains have the same management VLAN configuration for all VC interconnects and all Onboard Administrator modules.
      3. Ensure that all HP SAS Switches are configured with the same management VLAN ID as the Onboard Administrator modules in that enclosure.

Have a look at my updated post: HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 & VMware ESX(i) pre-requisites for information on all firmware & driver compatibility.

Categories: ESX, Flex-10, HP, VMware Tags: , , , , ,
  1. akash
    October 22nd, 2012 at 21:27 | #1

    Hi Julian,

    I am not sure if I can aks here but I am need of urgent help. I am planning to implement following change to prod environmnet tonight.

    Can you please confirm the approach to change OA, individual blade and virtual connect IP? My proposed approach is as follows. Please confirm you see any issues.
    Note: From networking point of view, all IPs are going to be in same subnet. We are configuring two switch ports with new subnet and as part of the implementation we will connect 2x OA to new ports.
    Step1: Change OA IP.
    – Login to HP OA.
    – Navigate to enclosure TCP/IP settings
    – Change standby on-board administrator ip to new one.
    – Connect network cable to newly allocated port
    – Make sure that able to ping new IP.
    – Failover OA to standby.
    – Change active OA IP to new one.
    – Make sure that able to ping new IP.
    – Fail back OA to its actual active OA.
    Step 2: Change individual blade IP.
    – Login to HP OA.
    – Navigate to Enclosure Bay IP Addressing
    – Change Device bay IP address to new ones according as allocated.
    – Make sure that able to ping new IPs.
    Steps 3: Change VC IP.
    – Login to HP OA
    – Navigate to enclosure TCP/IP settings- Interconnect bays
    – Change Device bay 1,2,3 and 4 IPs to new as pre allocated.
    – Make sure that able to ping new IPs.

    • WoodITWork
      October 24th, 2012 at 16:53 | #2

      Akash, apologies for the late reply, hopefully this was either successful or perhaps you have delayed.

      The steps look comprehensive enough. Only thing I’m not sure of is whether when amending the VC IP addresses whether you will lose blade network connectivity. Although this is only the switch management connection and not data without testing I’m not sure.

      Hopefully if you have comleted this you can share your experiences.

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