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Update 17/12/2011:   A flash reporting a possible issue that could occur if a drive fails during drive firmware update can be found here.

Until the flash is updated showing how to avoid this issue, only update drive firmware when installing a new machine or if all hosts are offline.

IBM recently released new drive firmware for the Storwize V7000, so I thought I would share the process of how I update that firmware.  You can download it from here.      The details for this new package can be found here.   I recommend you perform the drive update before you next update your Storwize V7000 microcode.

I want to be clear that one of the central goals of the Storwize V7000 is to ensure that performing drive firmware updates can be done online without host disruption.    This is possible because each drive can be updated in less than around 4 seconds.   The scripts I share below leave a 10 second delay between drives just to be safe.  I would still prefer that you did the update during a quiet period.

We need to perform this procedure using the command line as there is no way to do this procedure from the GUI (yet).

There are four steps:

1. Upload the Software Upgrade Test Utility to determine which drives need updating.
2. Upload the drive microcode package.
3. Apply the drive software.
4. Confirm all drives are updated.

Step 1:  Upload and run the upgrade utility

• You will need the upgrade test utility which you can get from here.
• You will need the Putty utility PSCP which you can get from here (although most of you should already have it).
• You will need to have created a public/private key pair and assigned it to a user.  In all the examples the user name I use is anthonyv.  You need to use your own user-id, although you could also use admin.   The process to create and associate the key pair is described here.  Place the PPK file into the putty folder along with the upgrade test utility.

From the Putty folder we need to upload the test utility.  You will need to change the key file name, userid and IP address (all highlighted in red) to suit your installation.

NOTE:  The following command is being run in a Windows command prompt.  You need to be in the C:\Program Files\Putty or C:\Program Files (x86)\Putty folder.

pscp -i anthonyv.ppk IBM2076_INSTALL_upgradetest_6.15 anthonyv@9.191.0.78:/home/admin/upgrade

Having uploaded the file, now start PuTTY and SSH to your Storwize V7000.   Logon and issue the following two commands.  You are using SSH commands now, not the Windows Command Prompt:

svcservicetask applysoftware -file IBM2076_INSTALL_upgradetest_6.15
svcupgradetest -f -d

If you get a warning window like the one shown below, indicating we have down-level drives, we need to proceed to the next step (note that the enclosure and slot numbers are not the same as drive IDs).  If you have a lot of drives, you can drop the -d from the svcupgradetest command to get a summary list.

******************* Warning found *******************
+----------------------+-----------+------------+------------------------------------------+
| Model                | Latest FW | Current FW | Drive Info                               |
+----------------------+-----------+------------+------------------------------------------+
| HK230041S            | 2920      | 291E       | Drive in slot 24 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 23 in enclosure  1         |
| ST9450404SS          | B548      | B546       | Drive in slot 22 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 21 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 20 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 19 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 18 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 17 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 16 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 15 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 14 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 13 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 12 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 11 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot 10 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot  9 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot  8 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot  5 in enclosure  1         |
|                      |           |            | Drive in slot  6 in enclosure  1         |
+----------------------+-----------+------------+------------------------------------------+

Step 2:  Upload the drive microcode package

Download the drive update package from here.  Put it into the PuTTY folder.
From a Windows command prompt we need to upload the package using the following command.   You will need to change the key file name, userid and IP address (all highlighted in red) to suit your installation.    Note yet again that you are running this in a Windows command prompt from the PuTTY folder (not from inside an SSH session):

pscp -i anthonyv.ppk IBM2076_DRIVE_20110928 anthonyv@9.191.0.78:/home/admin/upgrade

Step 3:  Apply the drive software

I have written some scripts to help you list the drive IDs that need to be updated and perform the updates.   You can upgrade the drives one at a time, or in bulk, depending on how you want to do this.  All the remaining commands are all run in a PuTTY session.

Firstly run this script to list all the drive IDs and current firmware levels.  We need the drive IDs if we want to update individual drives.

svcinfo lsdrive -nohdr |while read did error use;do svcinfo lsdrive $did |while read id value;do if [[ $id == "firmware_level" ]];then echo $did"   "$value;fi;done;done

The output will look something like this, showing the drive ID and that drive's current firmware level.   From step 1 we know what the latest firmware level is, so we can compare to the current firmware level:

0   291E
1   291E
2   B546
3   B546
4   B546
5   B546
6   B546
7   B546
8   B546
9   B546
10   B546
11   B546
12   B546
13   B546
14   B546
15   B546
16   B546
17   B546
18   B546
19   B546
20   B546
21   B546
22   B546
23   B546

Now we can update individual drives with this command, which will update drive ID 23.   Just keep changing the drive IDs, using the list of down-level drives, until every drive has been updated:

svctask applydrivesoftware -file IBM2076_DRIVE_20110928 -type firmware -drive 23

However you may have a lot of drives and want to upgrade them in bulk. So you could use this command, which updates drive ID 19 and 20 (highlighted in red).  You could change and also add extra drives to the list as required:

for did in 19 20;do echo "Updating drive "$did;svctask applydrivesoftware -file IBM2076_DRIVE_20110928 -type firmware -drive $did;sleep 10s;done

If we just wanted to upgrade every single drive in the machine (regardless of their level), we could run this command:

svcinfo lsdrive -nohdr |while read did name IO_group_id;do echo "Updating drive "$did;svctask applydrivesoftware -file IBM2076_DRIVE_20110928 -type firmware -drive $did;sleep 10s;done

When updating multiple drives, I have inserted a 10 second sleep between updates, just to ensure the process runs smoothly.  This means each drive takes about 13-15 seconds.

Once we have upgraded every drive, it is time for a final check.

Step 4: Confirm all drives are updated

You have two ways to confirm this.   Firstly run the following command to list the firmware level of each drive.  Is each drive reflecting the levels reported in Step 1?

svcinfo lsdrive -nohdr |while read did error use;do svcinfo lsdrive $did |while read id value;do if [[ $id == "firmware_level" ]];then echo $did"   "$value;fi;done;done

Now run the software upgrade test utility again:

svcupgradetest -f -d

Provided you receive no warnings about drives not being at the recommended levels, you are now finished with the drive updates.   Of course you could now proceed to install 6.2.0.4 firmware, but you can do that from the GUI.

Once your SVC or Storwize V7000 is upgraded to version 6.3 you can start using LDAP for authentication.   This means that when you logon, you authenticate with your domain user-id and password rather than a locally created user-id and password.

So why is this important?

• It saves you having to configure every user on every SVC or Storwize V7000.   If you have multiple machines this makes it far more efficient to set up authentication.
• It means that when commands are executed on the SVC or Storwize V7000, the audit log will show the domain username that issued that command, rather than a local username, or worse just superuser (i.e. who mapped that volume?  The superuser did.... who? )
• It gives you central control over access.   If someone leaves the company you just need to remove access at the domain controller, meaning there won't be orphan user-ids left on your Storage equipment.

So as an exercise I added my lab Storwize V7000 to our domain to show how it is done. This example also applies to an SVC so don't be confused if I only refer to Storwize V7000 from now on.

The first task is to negotiate with your Domain administrator to get a new group setup on the domain.   In this example I use a group called IBM_Storage_Admins which lets me use this group for various storage devices (such as an XIV or a SAN Switch).

To create this group we need to logon to the Domain Controller and configure Active Directory.  An easy way to do this from the AD controller is to go to Start → Run and type dsa.msc and hit OK.    The Active Directory Users and Computers Management Console should open.

Select the groups icon to create a new group.

Enter your group name, in my case:  IBM_Storage_Admins and hit OK.

Now right select relevant users who need access to the storage and add them to the IBM_Storage_Admins group.  In this example I have selected Anthony (which uses anthonyv as a username).

In this example we are adding anthony into the IBM_Storage_Admins group:

Now it is time to configure the Storwize V7000 so start the Web GUI and logon as Superuser.

Firstly we go to Settings → Directory Services:

We choose the button to Configure Remote Authentication:

We choose LDAP and hit next.

We choose Microsoft Active Directory with no Transport layer Security.  We then expand the Advanced Settings.   My lab domain is ad.mel.stg.ibm so I use the Administrator ID on the Domain Controller to authenticate access.  You could use any user that has authority to query the LDAP directory.  We then hit Next.

We then add the domain controller which in this example is 10.1.60.50 and the base domain name chopped into pieces (so ad.mel.stg.ibm becomes dc=ad,dc=mel,dc=stg,dc=ibm ) and hit Finish.

Provided the command completes successfully we have defined the domain controller to the Storwize V7000.   Now we need to add a group.  Go to Access → Users.

Select the option to add a New User Group.

In this example we want to add a group for users allowed full admin access to the Storwize V7000.  This matches the group we created on the Domain Controller.  So we call the group IBM_Storage_Admins and we use the Security Administrator role (which is the most powerful role) and tick the box to enable LDAP for this group.

Now to test, I logon to the Storwize V7000 using the domain user-id anthonyv with that users domain password.   Remember this user is not defined on the Storwize V7000 itself and that if it all goes wrong, we can still logon as Superuser.

Now I create a volume and delete it.  Then I check the audit log from Access → Audit log.

Sure enough, we see exactly who did that command.

This is a great outcome for security,auditing and for easy access administration.

If you have issues, from the Settings → Directory Services menu, use the Global Actions dropdown on the right hand side to Test LDAP Connections and Authentication or re-configure LDAP.

If you see any mistakes or have suggestions to improve the way I described this, please let me know.

With the 6.3 release of the Storwize V7000 and SVC code (which I blogged about here), there are so many new features and functions that I have plenty more to blog about!

The first new feature I blogged about was LDAP support, but an existing feature that has been enhanced is the performance monitor (brought in with release 6.2).   When this first came out I put a video on You Tube showing what metrics could be displayed in that release. This is a sped up image with no voiceover:

Now with release 6.3 IBM has added separate graphs for reads and writes plus the ability to display IOPS or MBPS, plus the ability to display graphs of read and write latency.   Nice!  I got so excited I made another You Tube video, this one with narration.   So now you can compare the new to the old: