upgrade

Here’s the ‘script’ read from while doing our ESX upgrades: In general: Do lots of up front work with kickstarts and analysis Each ESX Host Put host in maintenance mode Shut Down File request with storage administrator to make only boot LUN is visible to host as we are about to do some potentially damaging operations Put in new HBA (QLA4050) Boot to floppy diskette with QLA 4050 BIOS firmware updates Upgrade HBA BIOS iFlash If the system detects a QLx40xx controller, it displays the following message: QLx40xx Adapter found at I/O address: xxxxxxxx You will need to enter the adapter address Select “FB” to flash the BIOS....

We filed support requests with IBM and VMware and went through a very lengthy process without any results. Each of our hosts had the following iSCSI HBAs: QLA4010 QLA4050C A while ago we found out QLA4010 is not on the ESX 3.5 HCL even though it runs with a legacy driver. As our virtual environment grew we noticed storage performance lagging. This was particularly evident with our Oracle 10G Database server running our staging instance of Banner Operational Data Store....