Services Unavailable; Management Processor Access; Ipmi - HP Integrity Superdome 2 16-socket User Manual

Please note that Superdome 2 systems running a firmware bundle released prior to (numbered
lower than) 2.2.27 do not possess the capability to perform an online complex firmware update,
so it should be understood that updating to a future firmware bundle from firmware release 1.3.1,
for example, must be performed with all partitions taken offline, and the xfabric powered off.

Services unavailable

Superdome 2 server management features are unavailable during the process of an online complex
firmware update. System firmware will continue to operate and support the OS running on partitions
in the complex, however, certain activities may require system firmware to interact with server
management firmware, and these operations will not work during the actual process of executing
an online complex firmware update. These partition/complex firmware interactions may either be
delayed until after the complex firmware update operation has completed, or may be dropped or
only partially used. Legacy sx2000 Superdome systems also supported online update of server
management entities (MP, ED, PDHC, CLU), and performing such updates held similar consequences
for that platform.
The following table shows the major classes of server management services which the OS and
applications use during normal runtime and details their Availability or Unavailability during the
online complex firmware update process:
Service
Management processor access (for example: poweron/off,
restart, TOC, console, logs)
IPMI services
Console service to OS
System firmware services during boot, shutdown, MCA,
INIT and CMC logging operations
Network management services (SD2 has additional
services). OS-debugger, HP-SIM XML query, HP-SUM SOAP
query, WEBES ws-manage events and query.

Management Processor access

When an online complex firmware update is initiated, all current users are disconnected from the
OA for the duration of the complex firmware update process. This includes all OA CLI and GUI
sessions, with one possible exception: If the operator initiates the firmware update from the CLI,
then this session will remain active to allow for tracking the progress of the update for all but the
last few minutes. The time it takes for a complex firmware update to complete is highly variable
based on system size and complexity (bigger systems take longer), and the number of firmware
packages in the bundle which must be updated, but is not expected to exceed 150 minutes under
any conditions. Typical firmware updates will take less time to complete.

IPMI

During the process of an online complex firmware update, no IPMI requests can be serviced until
the update completes. This means that partition configuration changes, including iCAP changes,
will not be allowed. For reference purposes the following IPMI CLI commands are unavailable:
parcreate
pardefault
pardbmgr
parremove
178 Updating Firmware
Status during online complex firmware update
Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable, and some character loss is possible if the
buffer fills up
Available
Unavailable