Installing And Maintaining Firmware; About The Firmware Download Process - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

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Installing and maintaining firmware

This chapter contains procedures for installing and maintaining firmware. Fabric OS 5.3.0 provides
nondisruptive firmware installation.
Additionally, this chapter provides information on the following optional port blades:
• FC blades contain only Fibre Channel ports: FC4- 1 6, FC4-32, FC4-48.
• AP (application) blades are "intelligent" blades that integrate extra processors and specialized ports:
B-Series Multi-protocol (MP) Router blade
• CP blades have a control processor (CP) used to control the entire switch; they can be inserted only into
slots 5 and 6.

About the firmware download process

You can download Fabric OS to a director, which is a chassis; and to a non-chassis-based system, also
referred to as a switch. The difference in the download process is that directors have two CPs and
non-chassis based systems have one CP. Use the firmwareDownload command to download the
firmware from either an FTP or SSH server by using either the FTP or SCP protocol's to the switch.
The new firmware consists of multiple files in the form of RPM packages listed in a plist file. The .plist file
contains specific firmware information (time stamp, platform code, version, and so forth) and the names of
packages of the firmware to be downloaded. These packages are made available periodically to add
features or to remedy defects. Contact your switch's support provider to obtain information about available
firmware versions.
In single and dual-domain systems, the firmwareDownload command by default, downloads the
firmware image to both CPs by performing a High Availability (HA) failover to prevent disruption to traffic
flowing through the switch. This operation depends on HA status in the switch. If the switch does not
support HA, you can still upgrade the CPs one at a time, using the firmwareDownload -s option. This
mode enables you to select or disable install on both CPs, autoreboot, and autocommit modes, on
directors and switches. On directors, this mode enables you to upgrade a single CP. When downloading
the Fabric OS firmware, the -s option allows you to disable autoreboot.
All systems maintain two partitions of nonvolatile storage areas, a primary and a secondary, to store two
firmware images. The firmwareDownload command always loads the new image into the secondary
partition and swaps the secondary partition to be the primary.
By default, in switches, HA then reboots the system and activates the new image. In directors, HA then
reboots the standby CP and activates the new image. Finally, it performs the firmwareCommit
automatically, to copy the new image to the other partition.
If you are using a 4/256 SAN Director with one or more AP blades: The Fabric OS
automatically detects mismatches between the active CP firmware and the blade's firmware. The
auto-leveling process will automatically update the blade firmware to match the active CP. By the end of the
auto-leveling process, the active CP and the blade will run the same version of the firmware.
If the firmwareDownload command is interrupted by an unexpected reboot due to a software error or
power failure, the command will automatically recover the corrupted secondary partition. You must wait for
the recovery to complete before issuing another firmwareDownload command.
The command supports both non-interactive and interactive modes. If the firmwareDownload command
is issued without any operands, or if there is any syntax error in the parameters, the command enters an
interactive mode, in which you are prompted for input.
and FC4- 1 6IP blade
Fabric OS 5.3.0 administrator guide 173