New 3PAR user - How do you keep up with patches?

[neutronscott]

3PAR 8000 delivered with 3.3.1.410 (MU2)+P32,P34,P40,P45,P51,P52,P60,P76,P80

I put 3.3.1 MU3 on it and now want to get all patches up to date. I have a hard time understanding how you'd even know what patches there are. Looking in Software Licensing page I search for version "3.3.1 MU3" and read all the release notes, but some had none, and even some obsolete patches that are listed for 3.3.1 MU2 "that can be applied to MU3 as well"

This is a new system and I have support so asking them is an option. And I did, it went like this:

me: what patches should I apply to 3.3.1 MU3?
support: P109, P112, P114, P50, P58, P77, P91, P91
me: what about P104 I read it replaced P58, P77, P91, P97?
support: P50, P61, P92, P109, P114, P112, P120

so two different answers and nothing about P104.. idk does it matter?

[MammaGutt]

If you SP is set to autodownload patches, you get them there almost instant (however it can only hold 5 patches that haven’t been installed).

If you’ve linked your 3PAR on Infosight, you have recommendations there (however they seem to be lagging a few weeks after the actual release).

[neutronscott]

thanks. unfortunately we're not allowed to have any of those useful "call home" features on our equipment for security reasons.

I went ahead and starting applying them, at P104 now, and I think that's OK. I'm not sure why both techs left it out.

edit: ok i think i see why. P114 made P104 disappear. i overlooked that in it's release notes. final: 3.3.1.460 (MU3)+P50,P58,P61,P77,P91,P92,P97,P98,P107,P109,P112,P114,P116,P120

[ailean]

If running in an offline mode I'd recommend visiting the HPE SPOCK pages, they now have a handy summary of the recommended patches for each release. I still keep a manual track of each release from the support release notes pages as this summary doc has only been around for a couple of years (it's mostly aimed at required minimum patch levels before allowing major upgrade but a good start).

https://h20272.www2.hpe.com/spock/utility/document.aspx?docurl=Shared%20Documents/sw/array_3par/3par_upgrade_recommend.pdf

Generally be careful of updates with drive/cage firmware, these sometimes get withdrawn, although it maybe related to 1 of 6 updates within the pack but they don't always say why. Support usually have extra info on which patches are on the current "only use if required" list but they don't always have the latest releases (I've had to point out some replacement patches in the past).

PS My 9000 series MU3 boxes were updated resented by support and are currently at the following level, for reference;
3.3.1.460 (MU3)+P50,P58,P61,P77,P91,P92,P97,P109,P114