HP 1606 HP B-series Fabric OS 6.4.1b Release Notes (5697-0886, March 2011-incl - Page 23

NOTE: FICON Cascaded CUP is qualified on select platforms only. Firmware upgrades and downgrades Upgrading to Fabric OS 6.4.1b is allowed only from Fabric OS 6.3.x. The policy to support one-level migration only, which began with Fabric OS 6.0.0, provides more reliable and robust migrations. By having fewer major changes in internal databases, configurations, and subsystems, the system can perform the upgrade more efficiently, ensuring a truly seamless and nondisruptive process for the fabric. The one-release migration policy also reduces the number of upgrade-downgrade permutations that must be tested, allowing for thorough testing and verification of supported migration paths. If you are migrating from Fabric OS 6.1.x, HP recommends that you use Fabric OS 6.2.2d as the migration path to 6.3.x, and on to 6.4.1b in order to reduce the risk of exposure to known issues at earlier 6.2.x levels. The 2408 FCoE Converged Network Switch does not support nondisruptive HCLs. As a result, any firmware upgrades are disruptive to the I/O through the switch. Similarly, a code load of DC SAN Director or DC04 SAN Director with one or more DC SAN 10/24 FCoE blades disrupts traffic through the blade. If there are multiple node encryption groups (EGs) in a fabric, complete the firmware download on one node at a time before downloading on another node. Disable the ports in DC SAN Backbone Director Logical Switches that use 10 bit addressing mode that have 8 bit areas in the range 0x70-0x8F before upgrading to Fabric OS 6.4.x. Otherwise firmware upgrade fails with an error message. This step is necessary even if you do not plan to use FC8-64 blades after performing firmware upgrade to Fabric OS 6.4.0. However, if areas 0x70-0x8F are not in use, this step is not necessary. Use portAddress CLI to find out the areas in use within a Logical Switch. If Bottleneck detection feature is currently enabled on the switch running Fabric OS 6.3.x, you must disable it before upgrading to Fabric OS 6.4.x; otherwise, frame drops may occur due to increased Hot Code Load (HCL) time. 1606 Extension SAN Switch and DC SAN Director Switch Multiprotocol Extension blade must be power cycled after upgrading from Fabric OS 6.3 to Fabric OS 6.4. This is necessary to load the new FPGA image that enables IPv6 capability for FCIP links to the switch and the blade. This step is mandatory even if IPv6 is not used on the FCIP ports. Not performing this step will result in unpredictable behaviors on the FCIP links. Note that in the case of the extension blade, only the blade needs to be power cycled and not the entire DC SAN/DC04 SAN Director chassis. Firmware migration considerations For units currently operating at Fabric OS 6.2.x, HP recommends that you use Fabric OS 6.3.0d or 6.3.1a or later prior to migrating to Fabric OS 6.4.1b. This avoids an RSCN issue with earlier 6.3.x versions. For units currently operating at Fabric OS 6.3.x, there are no special steps required to migrate to Fabric OS 6.4.1b. Firmware upgrade instructions IMPORTANT: HP recommends that you upgrade to Fabric OS 6.4.1b as soon as possible to take advantage of the fixes and new features. Upgrading to Fabric OS 6.4.1b is allowed only from Fabric OS 6.3.x. For more guidelines, see "Update recommendation" (page 5). To access the latest Fabric OS 6.4.1b firmware, configuration files, and MIB files, see the HP website: http://www.hp.com/support/downloads Fabric OS feature compatibility in native connectivity modes 23