Compaq ProLiant 8000 Compaq ROM Technologies - Page 3

TC991204TB TECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ... INTRODUCTION The growth of the Internet and eBusiness places increasing demands on enterprise computing infrastructures. To meet those demands, enterprise customers are shifting from centralized, monolithic mainframe systems to distributed networks of servers, storage, and communication systems. Compaq offers a range of tools to help customers manage these distributed networks of diverse components. As a leading provider of server management tools, Compaq integrates tools that reduce the cost of server downtime by allowing administrators to work issues and resolve problems without taking the server off line. This technology brief describes two ROM technologies Compaq developed to help customers further ease manageability, reduce costs, and maximize availability. The Compaq Remote ROM Flash Utility allows administrators to streamline ROM upgrades, significantly reducing management costs and effort. Remote-flash Redundant ROM gives customers the manageability of the Compaq Remote Flash Utility plus the added protection of redundancy to maintain availability in the unlikely event of a ROM failure. TRADITIONAL APPROACH Upgrading server ROM firmware traditionally has been a manual process requiring a system administrator to be physically present at the server site. The traditional approach includes several steps: • The system ROMPAQ utility and image files must be downloaded and a bootable diskette must be created for each target server on which a firmware flash is planned. • Each server where the ROM firmware will be upgraded must be shut down and rebooted using the correct ROMPAQ diskette. • Upon reboot, the ROMPAQ utility guides the user through an interactive session allowing selection of devices desired for ROM flash. • The ROMPAQ utility then flashes the ROM firmware for the selected devices. • Once the ROM has been flashed, power must be manually cycled and the system must be rebooted into the desired operating system. This procedure is fairly simple and works well for customers with small numbers of servers located in close physical proximity. However, for large, geographically dispersed networks, traditional ROM upgrades can be time and cost prohibitive. COMPAQ REMOTE ROM FLASH UTILITY The Compaq Remote ROM Flash Utility allows administrators to upgrade the system and option ROMs for a wide range of Compaq servers, locally or across a network, from a single point of execution. The ROM upgrades can either be flashed individually or batched together to perform multiple ROM upgrades in a single step. The remote-flash technology is especially useful for administrators who need to manage large-scale ROM upgrades, like those required for a year 2000 update. Three versions of the utility are available: one each for use with Microsoft Windows NT, Novell NetWare, and SCO UnixWare server products. Current versions of the utility can be downloaded from www.compaq.com/support/files/server/ROMPAQ/index.html. 3