In my post HP Blade Firmware Upgrading Best Practices for ESXi Host I mentioned HP released firmware and drivers by SPP image. I have set my ESXi 5.5 baseline to SPP2014.06 as I have tested it in my lab environment. Looks like stable.
SPP2014.06 has ability to upgrade ESXi 5.5 host online, this is pretty convenient for my upgrading strategy. Before this release I have to make vCenter Update Manager baseline for new drivers, and apply it after offline firmware upgrading. I have to reboot host twice at least, but now it’s just one reboot!
BTW, I’m not familiar with SPP online firmware upgrading. After observation of vmkernel log I feel it’s actually mount a virtual USB drive to do upgrading, that’s only information I have regarding upgrading process.
Okay, let’s talk about the topic of this post. During the SPP2014.06 online firmware upgrading, my HP SUM keep show status Install in progress. I waited 3 hours in morning but got back nothing! vmkernel.log, vpxa.log and hostd.log show nothing, just regular events. Eventually I took the risk to force reboot the host. God bless me! It’s back online without any issue. 🙂
You have to be brave to do that if you are managing enterprise data center. IT Pro does not like risk! I would say we have way to work around it, at least reduce the risk.
If you go to %temp%HPSUM, you will see some folders are named by IP address. That’s the logs folder of HP SUM nodes, the upgrading logs is in deploy.log.
If you see keyword Update completed, but system reboot required, it indicates the upgrading has been completed. You could wait 15 – 20 minutes to see whether HP SUM can return upgrading result. If it keeps on Install in progress a long time, you could just stop HP SUM and reboot the host.
Do let me know if you see a problem by this workaround. Thanks.
在我之前的文章 HP Blade Firmware Upgrading Best Practices for ESXi Host中我提到惠普用SPP光盘来更新固件和驱动程序。我在试验环境下已经测试了SPP2014.06的稳定性，并且把我的ESXi 5.5的惠普刀片服务器固件和驱动基准定为SPP2014.06。
SPP2014.06可以实现在线更新ESXi 5.5服务器的固件和驱动，这对我的升级策略非常有意义。在这个版本之前我都不得不用SPP光盘先做离线固件升级，然后再在vCenter Update Manager下把对应的驱动程序做好基准包打到ESXi 5.5服务器上。这整个过程需要重启两次，现在只要一次重启了！
对了，虽然
我不是很熟悉SPP的固件升级过程，但是通过观察vmkernel日志，看起来它应该是通过在ESXi 5.5服务器下加载一个虚拟USB实现升级的。这是题外话。
OK，回到主题。我的HP SUM一直显示Install in progress当我
用SPP2014.06升级时，花了我一上午3个小时时间一直这样！而vmkernel.log、vpxa.log、hostd.log 里除了普通的记录外什么都没有。最终我决定冒险强制重启。还好最终这台服务器上线了且没有任何错误的硬件。J
如果你是管理企业级数据中心，并做和我一样的事情，你需要很大的勇气才行，哈哈！IT Pro是不喜欢风险的！其实我想说我们还是有办法解决这个问题的，至少是减少风险。
到%temp%HPSUM目录下，有一些以IP地址命名的文件夹，这就是HP SUM里每个目标主机的日志目录，进去找到deploy.log。
如果你在这个日志文件里看到关键字Update completed, but system reboot required，则说明升级已经成功了。可以继续等待15到20分钟看看HP SUM上会不会返回升级结果。如果它一直处于Install in progress 很久，你可以直接重启了。
如果你用这个方法遇到问题
，请告诉我，谢谢。
