AIX

Originally posted by: klimenta

Hi,

I am planning to upgrade the firmware on our AIX server (Full Partition 7038-6M2 POWER4 p650) to the latest firmware upgrade 3K070425. I was looking for some known issues on the Internet, but I couldn't find anything special.

I have some questions, any help greatly appreciated.

- Are there any know issues if I upgrade only the server firmware? I am planning to leave firmware on SCSI controllers, disks, etc... as they are.

• I will use HMC console to do the upgrade and use upgrade_flash command. I won't be able to use Service Processor because I don't have CD in the system and the server/HMC aren't connected to the Internet. I will shutdown DB2 and nobody will log at that time (Sunday 1AM). Any problems running the update from console instead from Service Processor?

• In case if something goes wrong, I already made 4 floppies with the same firmware. I was able to make these floppies from Windows, but these floppies are not readable from Windows/DOS. Windows utility that I was using said that everything is OK. Is this normal these floppies to be unreadable from DOS/Windows?

• If something goes wrong, can I revert back to the current firmware and how?

• If I use upgrade_flash and everything looks OK after 2-3 days, do I have to commit these changes to the firmware?

I am very cautious about this upgrade, because recently our third party vendor who maintains our EMC disks, made a change to their firmware. After couple of hours, several disks started to eat up to 100% of CPU. We share this EMC with some other Windows servers, so downgrade was out of the question. We allocated other disks and removed those who were eating up the CPU.

Thank you

Originally posted by: pvaughan

I would check to see if anything is REALLY backlevel. I've run into problems upgrading system firmware with SCSI and DVD-RAM devices on old firmware.

Also, I had problems going to AIX 5.3 on the lowest required firmware level. I passed it on the pre-upgrade check because it was the minimum required, then the system wouldn't boot, after flashing the system firmware I found the DVD wouldn't work and it couldn't see one of the SCSI drives. After upgrading all the firmware everything was good again.

I bring down all the LPARs on the system but one, then use the AIX firmware flash instructions, so I can't help you on using the HMC or service processor.

I haven't made the backup floppies in a long time, but I seem to remember that they are not FAT diskettes, so cannot be read by Windows.

Some servers have two copies of the firmware. I'm not sure on the 650's but the 690's have a A and B copy. You can copy one to the other then upgrade one of them.

You do not have to commit the firmware. I've left my A and B copies out of sync for over a year. Reverting back is as simple as bringing the system down and changing which copy it boots from.