Hardware manual

Group Administration Group members
6–13
Before updating firmware, see Firmware update considerations and prerequisites for important information to
consider.
Firmware update considerations and prerequisites
Regular firmware updates are an important part of maintaining a well-functioning group.
Before performing any firmware up
date, read the Release Notes for the new firmware and the Updating Storage
Array Firmware document. In addition, see your PS Series support provider for detailed information about
firmware and firmware updates.
When updating array firmware, keep in mind the issues listed below. The Updating St
orage Array Firmware
document describes them in greater detail and provides recommendations for addressing them.
• SAN planning. Before updating a SAN component, you must fully un
derstand the impact of the update on the
infrastructure. Careful planning of the upgrade process can help you avoid unplanned downtime.
• Timing. Dell reco
mmends that you perform firmware upgrades during off hours or scheduled maintenance
periods to avoid disruption of service to the applications and servers that the storage group supports. When
scheduling a firmware update, allow enough time to update and restart the entire group of arrays.
• P
lanning for downtime and minimizing host disruption. The
update procedure requires an array restart.
During an array restart, volumes with data on the array are temporarily unavailable until the restart completes.
To make sure that applications are not affected, follow the Dell guidelines in the iSCSI Initiator and Operating
System Considerations document.
• Backing up data. Upgrad
es should be implemented after a backup has occurred.
• Working with Multi-Member Groups. Dell recommends
that all PS Series group members run the same
version of the storage array firmware. The PS Series Release Notes describe which firmware versions can co-
exist in a group; however, only those features and bug fixes common to all versions are available.
• Softwar
e Prerequisites. Depend
ing on the firmware version, you might be required to update certain software
components prior to applying the upgrade.
• Array Prer
equisites. Before upgrading the firmware, you need network access to all group members, the
group IP address, and access to the
grpadmin account.
• Supported Upgrade Paths. U
sually, you can update an array directly to the latest firmware version. However,
in some cases, you might need to update to an interim version before updating to the latest version.
Updating member firmware
You can upgrade PS Series firmware to a higher version or downgrade firmware to a lower version.
Procedure for updating firmware
The Updating Storage Array Firmware document provides step-by-step instructions for updating member
firmware. You can obtain this document from the downloads area of the EqualLogic Customer Support Website.