The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center provisioning feature installs firmware on the managed hardware assets. You initiate the installations from the UI, rather than from the asset itself.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center provides default profiles for configuring firmware for servers and for disk storage. An alternate procedure is to create a Firmware Report. You then use the report results to update the firmware.
The benefit of using a profile to install firmware is that the firmware is installed consistently, no matter how many assets you provision. The benefit of using the Firmware Compliance Report is to identify the firmware on a specific asset or set of assets.
Describes the steps to provision firmware profiles.
The general procedure for provisioning firmware has the following steps:
Import a file with the firmware and the associated metadata into a software library, according to the procedure in Keeping Your Firmware Up-to-Date in the Operate How To library at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E59957_01/nav/operate.htm.
Create a firmware profile, based on one or more firmware images, according to the procedures in Keeping Your Firmware Up-to-Date in the Operate How To Library at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E59957_01/nav/operate.htm.
Shut down the server gracefully. Most firmware requires that the server is not running when the firmware is updated. Most firmware images include a power-off command for a running server, which causes a hard shutdown of the server.
Apply the firmware profile.
The Firmware Report feature compares the firmware images specified in a firmware profile to the firmware images installed on one or more hardware assets.
The report shows whether a target asset is compliant, not compliant, or not applicable:
A compliant asset has the firmware images specified in the profile.
A non-compliant asset does not have the same firmware images as specified in the profile. Update the firmware by either clicking the Make Targets Compliant button in the Interactive report or using the procedure in Updating Firmware.
A non-applicable asset indicates that a firmware image in the profile does not match the model of service processor in the asset. This condition can occur when either the profile does not recognize the model of the service processor or the profile includes firmware images that are not designed for the service processor.
Compare the model of the service processor displayed in the asset's Summary tab with the model of the service processor included in the profile. If they are different, add the name in the profile to the asset's data.
When the firmware profile was created, only images that matched the service processor could be included. However, if the service processor did not report all the firmware types it supported, an image that did not match the service processor could have been included in the profile. To update the Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center software with all the service processor's supported firmware types, use the Refresh action. When the job is completed, view the service processor's Summary tab to see all firmware types.
Create a new firmware compliance report.
See Creating a Firmware Report for the procedure to create the report.
To update the firmware on one or many assets, you use a deployment plan to apply a firmware profile for the type of asset. For a server, the profile updates the firmware on a service processor, and restarts the service processor and operating system.
For storage components, profiles update firmware on a RAID controller, an expander, or disk.
To see the deployment plans that update firmware, expand the Deployment Plans section of the Navigation pane and then click Firmware. A list of existing plans and profiles is displayed.
To update the firmware of one asset, an alternative to a deployment plan is to use the Update Firmware action. Select the asset from the Asset section of the Navigation pane and then click Update Firmware in the Actions pane.
Before you begin, the software library must contain the images that provision the firmware. Perform the Uploading a Firmware Image procedure in the Keeping Your Firmware Up-to-Date document in the Operate How To library at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E59957_01/nav/operate.htm.
If you are updating the firmware on a server, shut down the server before you update the firmware. A firmware update to a server's service processor usually requires that the server is not running. If you start to update the firmware on a running server's service processor, the procedure performs a hard shutdown of the server.
The firmware provisioning process for M-Series servers and servers that have ALOM service processors relies on a temporary account that performs an FTP operation.
Note:
Advanced Lights Out Management (ALOM) is a Sun Microsystems standard for servers such as: SunFire V125/V210/V215/V240/V245/V250/V440/T1000/T2000, Sun Netra 210/240/440, and SunBlade T6300.
If your site does not allow a temporary account, use the following procedure to prepare for the provisioning operation:
On the Enterprise Controller, open the /var/opt/sun/xvm/hal.properties in an editor.
Add the following properties to the file:
ftp.user.name=username ftp.user.password=password
Restrict access to the file to root user:
chmod 600 /var/opt/sun/xvm/hal.properties
On the Proxy Controller that provisions the firmware, enable the ftp service on Oracle Solaris or the vsftpd service for Oracle Linux systems.
You can now apply the firmware provisioning deployment plan. The FTP operation retrieves the credentials from the file.
If a network failure occurs while updating the firmware, repeat the firmware update procedure. If you do not repeat the procedure, the firmware inventory list might be incomplete.
The procedure is available for Oracle Solaris 10 Update 10 operating systems running on servers with the ILOM x86 (3.0 and higher) service processor.
When you update the firmware of a service processor, the procedure stops the operating system and the server before the update and restarts them after the update so that the new BIOS takes effect. If you prefer to stop and restart at a convenient time, keeping the current BIOS in effect, use the following procedure to change the action of both Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center and the firmware's metadata:
On the Enterprise Controller, open the /var/opt/sun/xvm/hal.properties in an editor.
Add the following property to the file:
ilom.fwp.skipAutoReboot=true
On the Proxy Controller that provisions the firmware, enable the ftp service on Oracle Solaris or the vsftpd service for Oracle Linux systems.
At a later time, reboot the servers.
When you select a server on the Assets pane, the Launch LOM Controller link is displayed on the Actions pane. This functionality launches the Browser User Interface (BUI) for servers with a Lights Out Management (LOM) port.
The Launch SP Controller link is only available to M-Series servers on the Actions pane for launching the specific BUI for the XSCF controller. The BUI is disabled by default on M-Series servers for security reasons and must be manually enabled before attempting to use this functionality.
The BUI for XSCF runs on the HTTPS protocol and can be enabled using the following command with a user with platadm privileges:
XSCF> sethttps -c enable