Upgrading disk firmware

About disk firmware upgrades

Disk firmware is upgraded automatically when one of the following is true:

You add new disks or a disk shelf.
Data ONTAP detects disk firmware updates in the /etc/disk_fw directory after a reboot.

Each storage system is shipped with a /etc/disk_fw directory that contains the latest firmware revisions at that time. Disk firmware updates can be added to this directory at the following times:

During a Data ONTAP upgrade
Disk firmware updates are often included with an upgrade to a new release family. Disk firmware updates are occasionally included in Data ONTAP upgrades within release families. This is the most common way to upgrade disk firmware.
During a manual firmware upgrade
You might be directed to download a disk firmware upgrade from the NOW site in the event that you encounter problems with certain disk types or you receive a notice from NetApp.

Each disk drive manufacturer has its own disk drive firmware. Therefore, disk firmware upgrades can include updates to firmware for one or more disk drive types. Because your storage system might use drives from multiple drive manufacturers, whether you are affected by a disk firmware update depends on the types and numbers of drives on your system.

Note
Because disk firmware upgrades are potentially time consuming and can affect storage system availability, make sure that you verify whether a disk firmware upgrade will take place during a Data ONTAP upgrade. To do so, follow the instructions described in Detecting outdated disk firmware.

Service availability during disk firmware upgrades

When you upgrade to Data ONTAP 7.1, the availability of storage system services during a disk firmware upgrade depends on the type of RAID protection on aggregates containing the disks.

Disk firmware upgrades can take place in two ways:

Background (nondisruptive) disk firmware upgrade
Nondisruptive disk firmware upgrades take place automatically in the background when the disks are members of aggregates of the following types:
- RAID-DP
- Mirrored RAID-DP (RAID-DP with SyncMirror® software)
- Mirrored RAID4 (RAID4 with SyncMirror software)
For more information, see About background disk firmware upgrades.
Standard disk firmware upgrade
In Data ONTAP 7.1, disk firmware upgrades for RAID4 aggregates must complete before the new Data ONTAP version can finish booting. Storage system services are not available until the disk firmware upgrade completes.

For more information, see About standard disk firmware upgrades.

For example, if a storage system contains a RAID-DP and a RAID4 aggregate and disks in both aggregates require a disk firmware upgrade, the storage system cannot service requests until the RAID4 aggregate's disk firmware is updated, even though the RAID-DP aggregate's disks are upgrading firmware in the background.

To verify the type of RAID protection you have on your system, complete the following step.

Step	Action
1	At the storage system command line, enter the following command: `aggr status` Result You see output similar to the following: Aggr State Status Options data2_vol online raid-dp, flex data1_vol online raid-dp, flex vol0 online raid4, flex root If any volume, including the root volume, is configured with RAID4 protection, a standard disk firmware upgrade (interrupting storage system services) will take place at the next reboot when new disk firmware is present on the system. Note In some storage systems, RAID4 is configured on the root volume by default. Be sure to check the RAID type of your root volume before you upgrade, and reconfigure it if necessary, if you require a nondisruptive disk firmware upgrade.

Step

Action

At the storage system command line, enter the following command:

aggr status

Result

You see output similar to the following:

Aggr       State   Status            Options

data2_vol  online  raid-dp, flex

data1_vol  online  raid-dp, flex

vol0       online  raid4, flex       root

If any volume, including the root volume, is configured with RAID4 protection, a standard disk firmware upgrade (interrupting storage system services) will take place at the next reboot when new disk firmware is present on the system.

Note
In some storage systems, RAID4 is configured on the root volume by default. Be sure to check the RAID type of your root volume before you upgrade, and reconfigure it if necessary, if you require a nondisruptive disk firmware upgrade.

About background disk firmware upgrades

When a storage system configured with RAID-DP or SyncMirror reboots and there is new disk firmware present, the affected drives are automatically and sequentially taken offline, and the storage system responds normally to read and write requests. If any request affects an offline drive, the read requests are satisfied by reconstructing data from other disks in the RAID group, while write requests are written to a log. When the disk firmware upgrade is complete, the drive is brought back online after resynchronizing any write operations that took place while the drive was offline.

During a background disk firmware upgrade, the storage system functions normally. You will see status messages as disks are taken offline to upgrade firmware and brought back online when the firmware upgrade is complete. Background disk firmware upgrades proceed sequentially for active data disks and for spare disks. Sequential disk firmware upgrades ensure that there will be no data loss through double-disk failure.

Offline drives are marked with the annotation "offline" in the vol status -r command output. While a spare disk is offline, it cannot be added to a volume or selected as a replacement drive for reconstruct operations. However, a disk would normally remain offline for a very short time (a few minutes at most) and hence would not interfere with normal system operation.

The background disk firmware upgrade will be completed unless the following conditions are encountered:

Degraded volumes on the storage system
Disks needing a firmware update are present in a volume or plex that is in an offline state

Automatic background disk firmware upgrades will resume when these conditions are addressed. For more information about determining volume status and state, see the Storage Management Guide.

Automatic background disk firmware upgrades are overridden when the disk_fw_update command is issued. For more information about this command, see Command for upgrading disk firmware.

Note
Automatic background disk firmware upgrades are enabled by the raid.background_disk_fw_update.enable option, which is set to on by default. The value of this option can be overridden during a cluster takeover, when the disk_fw_update command is issued, or when a disk firmware upgrade is required for disks in a RAID4 aggregate. You are advised not to change the default value unless directed by NetApp staff.

About standard disk firmware upgrades

In Data ONTAP 7.0.1 and later RAID4 aggregates (as well as in all volume and aggregate configurations in earlier Data ONTAP releases), standard disk firmware upgrades take place automatically during the first reboot after the appearance of new disk firmware on the system. Because disk drives must be spun down and spun back up to install new firmware, disk firmware upgrades can take many minutes depending on the number of drive types and disk drives per type on your storage system. During a disk firmware upgrade, the disks of the affected drive types are not available.

Note
If you upgrade RAID protection to RAID-DP, disk firmware upgrades take place in the background and are non-disruptive.

Detecting outdated disk firmware

AutoSupport messages include information about disk firmware installed on your storage system. The NOW Installed Product pages use these messages to monitor the firmware versions on your storage system and to post notices when installed disk firmware in the /etc/disk_fw has been superseded. These notices indicate that the disk firmware on at least some of your disks will be upgraded during your next Data ONTAP upgrade, which can help you plan your upgrade.

To use the NOW Installed Products service to monitor disk firmware versions:

AutoSupport must be enabled on your storage system.
For more information about AutoSupport, see the System Administration Guide.
You must have registered your NetApp products.
For more information, see Product Registration on the NOW site at http://now.netapp.com/Self-Service/Forms/frmProductReg.asp.

To determine if your storage system has outdated disk firmware, complete the following steps.

Step	Action
1	Use a Web browser to go to http://now.netapp.com/.
2	Click Installed Products.
3	Display the product details for the storage systems you are upgrading by entering search criteria for a specific system or displaying a list of systems at your company.
4	In the AutoSupport Status category, click Analysis. Result You see a list of System Level Notices for your storage system. If there is a notice that newer disk firmware is available for your storage system, a disk firmware upgrade will take place with your next Data ONTAP upgrade. If there is no disk firmware notice, the disk firmware on your system is up to date.

When to upgrade disk firmware manually

If you receive error messages about the firmware compatibility, you must manually upgrade the disk firmware using one of the following procedures:

Manually update disk firmware with the disk_fw_update command.
See Command for upgrading disk firmware.
Download new disk firmware from the NOW site, then run the disk_fw_update command.
See Obtaining disk firmware updates.

Note
When you upgrade the storage system software, disk firmware is updated automatically as part of the storage system software upgrade process. A manual update is not necessary unless the new firmware is not compatible with the storage system disks.

Command for upgrading disk firmware

You use the disk_fw_update command from the storage system console on a running system to update firmware on all disks or a specified disk on a storage system. The disk_fw_update command upgrades disks for which firmware files are present in the /etc/disk_fw directory and which need to be updated. It does not upgrade other disks.

The disk_fw_update command is applicable to both SCSI disks and Fibre Channel disks.

For more information, see the disk_fw_update(1) man page.

Note
This command makes disks inaccessible for up to two minutes, so network sessions using the storage system should be terminated before running the command. This is particularly true for CIFS sessions, which otherwise are terminated while this command executes.

This command overrides any background disk firmware upgrade that is in progress.

Obtaining disk firmware updates

System firmware updates are available from the Disk Drive & Firmware Matrix, on the NOW site at http://now.netapp.com/NOW/download/tools/diskfw/. Download and upgrade disk firmware according to the instructions.