So, you manage and maintain HP Servers (DL, BL, Matrix Environments etc.) and you’re usual firmware update procedure is to chuck on the HP Smart Update Firmware DVD when you think you should and just update all the firmware on the server. Probably not the best way to do it, but I bet a lot of you out there do it just like that. HP has produced a nice white paper: HP Proliant Firmware Management and Planning Guide – Best Practises. This is their take on how to properly implement firmware upgrades across there environments.
Planning firmware updates rather than just doing them whenever you feel like makes the update process smoother, with less likely hood of unwanted downtime. You probably have a patching strategy,
why not one for firmware updates? The HP white paper helps to create this update strategy, providing information on keeping your environment updated and running as it should, plus an outline for creating the update plan which should be followed before updating your server environment. It also contains information on:
- Updated best practices for firmware deployment
- Update regularity
- Creation of baselines
- Handling of interim and critical updates
- Differences in planning based on environments including single server, enclosure, distributed data center, large enterprise and CloudSystem Matrix
- Driver dependencies for all types of firmware updates
- How to gather information for reports
- Interim updates for Windows PSPs with associated advisories for updating PSPs to the latest version from as far back as PSP 7.00
Check it out here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02967678/c02967678.pdf
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