InformOS 2.3.1 is EOL - offline upgrades only now!

[Davidhm]

We are finally looking at upgrading out Prod & DR T800 arrays from 2.3.1 MU4 (the initial firmware) after various problems experienced when we upgraded our Dev T800. the main one being the Windows 2008 R2 servers offlined their LUNs at the next reboot. So we raise an HP support case to upgrade the firmware, only to be told:

"Please be advised that Inform OS version 2.3.1.is already EOL and any upgrade from that version we can only perform offline upgrade to 3.1.1Mu3 and then perform the second hop that is 3.1.1Mu3 to 3.1.2Mu3+P18+25 in online manner."

This pdf explains the position. It's dated November 2012, but it's clearly caught us and our HP support account team unawares!
http://www.hp.com/softwarereleases/rele ... LFINAL.pdf

So I thought I would highlight it here in case anyone else is still running 2.3.1.

Regards,

David

[Richard Siemers]

Hello David,

In the same boat here. That "announcement" snuck past us too.

Check out that asterisk in the letter:

* Please note that this End of Life announcement does not over-ride any existing contract that you may have with HP to receive software LTUs or support.

Escalate for an online upgrade if doing it offline is a hardship for the business, leverage your sales team/engineer to make this happen, assuming you have an active support contract. The online upgrade will be to 3.1.1, then to whatever higher version you want (basically 2 upgrades).

There are a couple touch points with 2.3.1 to 3.1.1, about 4 Microsoft KB patchs for MPIO, certain cluster disks needing to be put into maintenance mode, and then the issue with Windows 2008/2012 taking the volumes offline after a reboot.

For the last issue, HP recommends the execution of Microsoft KB2849097 on every Windows Server 2008/2012 host connected to a HP 3PAR array.

For the upgrade from 3.1.1 to 3.1.2 I didn't see any mentioned of cluster disks in maintenance mode, but they still have the luns offline work around.

[beltower]

This document may help to assist in what is required to upgrade to 3.1.x

[macknife]

Note also that 3.1.2 doesn't support RHEL 5.5...

[Richard Siemers]

Note also that 3.1.2 doesn't support RHEL 5.5...

Any idea if this because it simply wasn't tested? or because someone did test it, and knows it to be incompatible?

[Richard Siemers]

We just successfully online upgraded our T800 from 2.3.1 MU4 to 3.11 MU3 this weekend. Our windows team wrote 2 scripts, one to put all the appropriate cluster disks in maintenence mode, and another to prevent the offline after reboot disk issue. I plan to post them in the scripts section as soon as they are made available to me.

[macknife]

Note also that 3.1.2 doesn't support RHEL 5.5...

Any idea if this because it simply wasn't tested? or because someone did test it, and knows it to be incompatible?

Sorry, I do not know. It was on one of those update matrices our CE provided us with.. but I've since moved on from there. I'll see if I can dig it up from my past emails.

[Cleanur]

I'd get this rechecked, some of the RHEL support rules have been recently expanded / relaxed.

http://h20272.www2.hp.com/utility/docum ... _10_02.pdf