NOTE:  The LiveDVD solution outlined below is NOT supported by Dell.

Dell already supports multiple options for customers to update their firmware of the hardware components in Dell servers.

i) Life Cycle Controller

ii) System Build and Update Utility (SBUU)

iii) Server Update Utility (SUU)

iv) Dell Update Packages (DUPs)

v) rpm DUPs with OM components.

Life Cycle Controller (LCC)

     The user can use the USC (Unified Server Configurator) or WS-Management protocol to configure the repository URI. The LCC will pick up the updates from the repository and stage them locally. Once staged, the user will be able to trigger a firmware update from LCC. 

The LCC also has options to roll back to previous versions of firmware as necessary.

SBUU

     SBUU provides mostly the same functionality of LCC(with respect to firmware updates) but using a DVD. SBUU is a bootable Live DVD which talks to a remote repository to gather the Firmware updates and uses those updates to bump up the firmware on the hardware components. 

SUU

     SUU is another DVD, which has the firmware updates populated in the DVD itself. So, the customers can run the DVD in their OS and update the firmware on their hardware components.

DUPS

     Download the right DUPS (*.EXE/*.BIN)from support.dell.com and execute them on the supported Operating systems (with all the dependencies installed). This will update the firmware on the underlying Hardware components.

rpm DUPs with OM components

     Install all the OM & firmware components along with firmware-tools on a supported Linux Distribution and use those tools to update the firmware of the underlying hardware.

 
Along with all these options Dell’s Linux Engineering team put together a prototype CentOS LiveDVD which can be used to update the firmware on target systems. The users don't have to manage any firmware repositories for picking up updates. All the firmware updates are available with-in the DVD. This liveDVD will have all the firmware packages from Dell's repository at http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/OMSA_x.x (Ex: 6.5, 6.4 etc.) along with all the required dependencies installed. The users can boot to the DVD, update the firmware on all the hardware components and get back to their normal business.

For all those customers using unsupported OS distributions, this liveDVD will be a great help updating the firmware on their servers.

We have a private instance of OpenSUSE Build Service (https://build.opensuse.org/) setup internally at Dell for building these live cd images. Using this build system, we intend to update the liveDVD following the release cycle of Dell OpenManage.

Currently the liveDVDs for OM 6.4 and OM 6.5 are posted at: http://linux.dell.com/files/openmanage-contributions/om64-firmware-live/ and http://linux.dell.com/files/openmanage-contributions/om65-firmware-live/ respectively. Please check them out and let us know your comments/experience.

Please note, this is NOT a solution officially supported by Dell.

How to Use: 

The LiveDVD will automatically login to a GUI session. Once you reach the terminal, you can use the standard Linux commands to update the firmware.

inventory_firmware: This command will gather the firmware levels of all the h/w components plugged in the system.

update_firmware: This command will compare the installed firmware levels to those available in the LiveDVD.

update_firmware --yes: Will update the firmware on all the h/w components to those available on the liveDVD.

inventory_firmware_gui: GUI interface shows a comparison of the installed firmware versions and the updates available in the repository and allows the user to update the firmware.

Please be sure to choose the first boot option during boot, as shown above. 

The firmware update GUI automatically comes up with autologin when you boot into the liveDVD. In the GUI, click “Update Firmware” and go to the update page as shown below:

Click “Update Now” to start flashing the updates. 

Once all the updates are complete as the shown below, you can reboot your system.

To support the firmware updates, all the OM components are installed in the LiveDVD by default. The liveDVD also brings up a firefox instance opening https://localhost:1311 URL. Login to OM web session with “root” and “linux” as the username and password, and you will have access to the System management information collected by OM.

Following are a couple of screenshots of the webpage:

We are working to improve this build process and the liveDVD image configuration as well. This CD is the first prototype release. Please let us know your comments/experiences using this liveDVD.

I want to stress again, that this is not an officially supported solution. But, we will be listening on the poweredge Mailing List. So, please leave comments/suggestions on the mailing List.

P.S: the root password is "linux" on the live DVD.