Jay,
I just finished this task Sunday with the help of our rep. Our procedure was to push DOT to the filer, run the download and then reboot the filer. When the filer is booting, it will notify you that n disks are out of rev. This is not fatal, just a warning. After the filer was running we performed the disk_fw_update.
Yes, there is cluster considerations. 1.) disable clustering. 2.) down the partner, halt -f. 3.) run the disk_fw_update. 4.) halt -f the system and boot the partner. 5.) run the disk_fw_update.
We disabled the clustering on the pair and performed the disk_fw_update on each filer. When we attempted to reboot the machine we received a error about the mailbox being inconsistent. This was easily fixed when we powered off the disks and the unit head and brought everything back up from a cold restart. You will incur downtime with the upgrade but I understand that engineering knows about this already and are working on it.
-gdg
Jay Soffian wrote:
I have a question about the timing on upgrading disk firmware. With the recent DOT's when you do a DOT upgrade, after you reboot and a disk firmware upgrade is needed, DOT warns you at boot time, at which point you can do a disk_fw_update. This is when I've upgraded disk firmware. However, the NOW documentation isn't clear if this is the appropriate time to upgrade the disk firmare.
So, my question is, when is the best time to upgrade the disk firmware:
- After you've run install_netapp, but before you've run 'download'.
- After you've run download.
- After you've rebooted on the new DOT version.
Also, are there any cluster considerations associated with the choice of timing? I noticed when upgrading a cluster this weekend that I received downrev messages from the NetApps until both partners had the same disk firmware.
j.
Jay Soffian jay@cimedia.com UNIX Systems Engineer 404.572.1941 Cox Interactive Media