Dell PowerEdge 2600 PowerEdge RAID Controller 4/Di Firmware Update Version: 2.48 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 Introduction 2.0 Performing the Firmware Upgrade 3.0 Minimum recommended ESM, System BIOS, and driver levels 4.0 Fixes or Enhancements 5.0 Important Information 6.0 Change History 1.0 Introduction This firmware update delivers bug fixes and enhancements for the PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 4/Di in PowerEdge 2600 systems. 2.0 Performing the Firmware Upgrade Note: Before upgrading the firmware please verify that your firmware is at 2.37. Dell Webpack: This program creates a bootable diskette to upgrade the firmware of the controllers. You will need a formatted 3 1/2 inch floppy diskette for the following procedure. 1) Download the file to a directory on your hard drive. The file downloaded is a self extracting executable. 2) Insert a blank diskette into the system's diskette drive. 3) Double click on the file that you downloaded and follow the instructions on the screen to extract the files to the diskette. 4) Insert the diskette into the system with the RAID controller for which you want to update the firmware and reboot the system. 5) Follow the instructions on the screen to update the firmware. NOTICE: pflash.exe will be executed automatically and will report existing code level and prompt you to reconfirm before starting the firmware upgrade process. To perform this process in non-interactive mode please execute, pflash /? and read about possible command line switches. 6) Remove the diskette and reboot the system. Dell Update Package Instructions: Download 1. Click the "Download Now" link to download the file. 2. If the Export Compliance Disclaimer window appears, click the "I agree" link to accept the agreement. 3. When the File Download window appears, click "Save" to save the file to your hard drive. Installation 1. Browse to the location where you downloaded the file and double-click the new file. 2. Read over the release information presented in the dialog window. 3. Download and install any prerequisites identified in the dialog window before proceeding. 4. Install any necessary Embedded Systems Management firmware prior to this BIOS update. 5. Click the Install button. 6. Follow the remaining prompts to perform the update. The Update Package can also be used with Dell OpenManage Server Administrator. See the Dell Update Package User's Guide for more information. 3.0 Fixes or Enhancements Component Current Version Previous Version Firmware 2.48 2.37 BIOS 1.06 1.05 Ctrl-M U812 5.62 Boot Block 1.7.1Dell 1.6.6Dell MPT SCSI firmware 01.03.11.05-IT 01.03.06.00-IT Firmware Enhancements 1. Improved hard drive status logic when virtual disks are spanned across channels. 2. Firmware will automatically change cache settings to WriteThru when a battery problem is detected to preserve data. If WriteBack was originally selected, firmware will switch back once battery problem has been corrected. 3. In the Rebuild function of CRTL-M, a new status called “INCON” will be displayed after a rebuild operation completes if any unrecoverable errors are found in any of the hard disk drives. To identify the location of the error and if any data was present, run a check disk from the O/S (e.g. chkdsk in windows). Note: Dell recommends that a check disk or consistency check should be run after any RAID rebuild operation is completed by the controller. Firmware Bug Fixes 1. When multiple hard drive media errors are encountered, array rebuild operation will complete. 2. Consistency checks are aborted after reboot in cluster or stand alone mode. User must restart consistency check manually if needed. 3. Manual initialization calls will be rejected if a background initialization or consistency check is in progress on the logical drive. 4. Address potential controller lock-ups that could occur during either degraded, rebuilding or multiple drive pull and reinsert scenarios. 5. Addressed potential controller freezing during driver failure on possible Raid configurations. 4.0 Important Information Firmware upgrade while controller is doing background I/O task Firmware upgrade process will fail if any background I/O task (i.e. RAID-5 background consistency check or power on auto-resume rebuild and reconstruction) is being performed. The program will stop at the "Flash Download" screen with the following message: "Consistency Check of logical drive(s) in progress for adapter-X. Failed Writing Image on Adapter X with Baseport ...". Firmware and configuration on the adapter will not be modified by the program. A reboot can be performed to return to the Operating System. Wait until the background task completes before updating the firmware. Universal CRTL-M: Multiple adapters can be configured from CRTL-M, but currently selected adapter should be verified before performing any configuration changes using the Select Adapter option. Drive Migration: When hard drives are moved from one controller to another, the target controller configuration must be cleared to ensure a configuration mismatch does not occur. FlexRAID: FlexRAID Virtual Sizing is no longer supported by the current firmware (v.2.48) and should be disabled prior to firmware flash. This can be performed from CRTL-M by accessing Objects -> Logical drive -> View/Update Parameters -> FlexRAID Virtual Sizing and will need to be performed for each logical drive present. 5.0 Change History Change History from 2.27 to 2.37 Firmware Enhancements None Firmware Bug Fixes 1) Fixed Blue screen due to a misbehaving drives. 2) Changed the request sense length to 0x10 from 0x12. This was owing to CRC errors on Seagate drives. 3) Fixed issue where misbehaving drive would cause the system to hang. 4) Fixed NVRAM issue related to downgrading firmware. 5) Fixed issue where BGI would run during an NVRAM mismatch. 6) Sense Info pointer now increments correctly. 7) Fixed issue where rebuild might not restart after reboot. 8) Added fix for the firmware to keep checking for hot spare if the first rebuild fails. 9) Fixed a problem where the firmware would continuously respond to an auto request sense failure from a failing hard drive. 10) Fixed a conflict with Direct I/O, No Read-Ahead, and Write-Through cache parameters and platforms with more than 4 GB of system memory. BIOS Changes None Ctrl-M Changes None WebBIOS changes None Change History from 2.24 to 2.27 Component Current version Previous version Firmware 2.27 2.24 BIOS 1.04 1.03 Ctrl-M 5.62 5.62 WebBios 1.65 1.65 Firmware Enhancements None Firmware Bug Fixes 1. There was a data corruption for I/Os in Write Back mode, introduced during implementation of fast I/O feature in WRITE BACK mode in an earlier version. We then disabled it as per request in release version 2.21. We thought that was only for that specific release. Since it was enabled in the common code the bug reappeared in the later version. 2. Battery status was not properly detected. WebBios Bug Fixes None WebBios Enhancements None