Updating Cisco UCS firmware from 1.1 to 1.2 or 1.3

This post is actually a copy and paste of a post I made on the Cisco forum when I was updating a redundant Cisco UCS deployment for a client.

See this link for the assistant I got from a user named Daniele on the forum: https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3110827#3110827

Here’s what I asked (copy and pasted from the forum):

I managed to the the fabric interconnects, UCSM and IOMs updated but when I look at the installed firmware tab, I can see that all the “Server” components are still at 1.1.

I’m unsure as to whether I’m missing something here from the 2nd link listed above when it lists the following steps:

Step 1 #In the Navigation pane, click the Servers tab.
Step 2 #On the Servers tab, expand Servers > Policies.
Step 3 #Expand the node for the organization that includes the policy you want to update.
If the system does not include multi-tenancy, expand the root node.
Step 4 #Expand Host Firmware Packages and select the policy you want to update.
Step 5 #In the table on the right, do the following to delete the existing entry for the firmware
you want to update: #
a.#Select the line in the table for the firmware version that you want to change.
b.#Right-click and select Delete.
c.#Click Yes to confirm that you want to delete that entry.

When I navigate to the “host firmware packages”, I have no packages listed in there. How do I proceed in updating the servers? I’ve attached a screenshot of what I see in the installed firmware tab. Thanks.


Here’s the answer I got from Daniele (it works):

Hi Terence,

We usually do it “manually”, one blade at a time.

You have to go to Equipment->Server to work one server at a time. When in Server view, go down to “Installed Firmware” and open “Update Firmware”: select 1.2 as the “Backup Version” (I see you already did it).

When GUI says “ready” under “update Status” column, you can go on to click on “Activate Firmware”: at THAT time the blade will reboot, placing previous 1.2 “Backup Version” to the new “Running Version”.

Is it the answer you were looking for, or you wanted a method to do it automatically ?

Bye

Daniele

A week after I completed the upgrade from 1.1 to 1.2, 1.3 was released so I had to go through this exercise again and noticed that the update guide did not include instructions on how to update the blades.