Updating Dell firmware from within XenServer Dom0

An article by The Architect from From the Architect

I’m bringing a new XenServer 6 pool online so having installed XenServer6 it was time to bring the hardware up to the latest patch and firmware levels.

Applying XenServer patches are quite simple via XenCentre, especially with the new rolling upgrade wizard, so no need to go into detail on that.

I needed to apply the latest firmware to the underlying hardware and update the Broadcom NIC drivers to the latest version which require a little more work.

Dell firmware pack

Now, the official way of applying firmware updates is to boot from DVD, but that would involve the data centre burning iso’s and connecting the KVM to my servers one by one – all rather alot of hassle.

Note: the following procedure modifies your Dom0 so would potentially make your server unsupported by Citrix

The XenServer Dom0 is a modified version of CentOS Linux, so we have the yum package manager at our disposal.

Read More

Tags: firmware, maintenance