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SANtricity 11.5
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Controller software and firmware upgrades

Contributors netapp-jolieg
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You can upgrade your storage array's software and firmware for all the latest features and bug fixes.

Components included in the SANtricity OS controller software upgrade

Several storage array components contain software or hardware that you might want to upgrade occasionally.

  • Management software — System Manager is the software that manages the storage array.

  • Controller firmware — Controller firmware manages the I/O between hosts and volumes.

  • Controller NVSRAM — Controller NVSRAM is a controller file that specifies the default settings for the controllers.

  • IOM firmware — The I/O module (IOM) firmware manages the connection between a controller and a drive shelf. It also monitors the status of the components.

  • Supervisor software — Supervisor software is the virtual machine on a controller in which the software runs.

sam1130 dwg upgrade firmware locations

1 Controller shelf; 2 Drive shelf; 3 Software, controller firmware, controller NVSRAM, supervisor software; 4 Drive firmware; 5 IOM firmware; 6 Drive firmware

You can view your current software and firmware versions in the Software and Firmware Inventory dialog box. Go to Support › Upgrade Center, and then click the link for Software and Firmware Inventory.

As part of the upgrade process, the host's multipath/failover driver and/or HBA driver might also need to be upgraded so the host can interact with the controllers correctly. To determine if this is the case, see the Netapp Interoperability Matrix Tool.

When to stop I/O

If your storage array contains two controllers and you have a multipath driver installed, the storage array can remain processing I/O while the upgrade occurs. During the upgrade, controller A fails over all of its LUNs to controller B, upgrades, takes back its LUNs and all of controller B's LUNs, and then upgrades controller B. After the upgrade completes, you might need to manually redistribute volumes between the controllers to ensure volumes return to the correct owning controller.

Pre-upgrade health check

A pre-upgrade health check runs as part of the upgrade process. The pre-upgrade health check assesses all storage array components to make sure the upgrade can proceed. The following conditions might prevent the upgrade:

  • Failed assigned drives

  • Hot spares in use

  • Incomplete volume groups

  • Exclusive operations running

  • Missing volumes

  • Controller in Non-optimal status

  • Excess number of event log events

  • Configuration database validation failure

  • Drives with old versions of DACstore

You also can run the pre-upgrade health check separately without doing an upgrade.