Guest blog written by Chris Bradley, HP ISS Systems Engineer, Business Development Team
As a member of the Blades SWAT team, I regularly meet with customers and hear the challenges they face within their data center. Part of my job as an HP engineer is to find solutions to help meet their needs. Maintaining system firmware and software has become an industry wide problem, and we hear customers say the complex update process drains valuable resources. HP has heard you loud and clear, and only we have developed an industry leading solution to help dramatically simplify this process.
Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) version 2011.12 and HP Smart Update Manager (HP SUM) version 5 announced on November 14, 2011 and provide a new, comprehensive approach to firmware and system software maintenance. Together they enable up to 3x faster online updates and up to a 93% reduction in server downtime*.
How is this possible? What changed so dramatically? A lot!
The process is significantly simplified. HP has makes the collection of drivers and firmware much easier with SPP, which conveniently bundles updates in a single ISO download. HP engineers rigorously test all of the complex interdependencies between firmware and system software —not just within the server but also between servers and enclosures— on a continuous basis. So, the once manual process of dependency checking is now automatically done for you. Additionally, HP SUM 5 ensures the updates are prescriptively deployed in the right context and order, providing accuracy and confidence in the implementation.
The bi-directional discovery feature simplifies the device discovery process for BladeSystem environments. Once an Onboard Administrator (OA) is discovered, it will automatically list all associated Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) devices in Blade servers and Virtual Connect modules in that enclosure. Conversely, discovered iLO devices in Blade servers will automatically list the associated OA in their enclosure. This ensures all devices are included in the inventory, preventing human error leading to incomplete interdependency checking.
With HP SUM 5, you will automatically have the latest information you need at your finger tips through the robust analysis and comprehensive reporting capabilities. This enables you to see a complete picture of what is currently installed in your environment and what updates are available. Additionally, discrepancy analyses between the two are provided, so you can quickly see what updates are actually needed for your particular environment.
We know that operational stability is of the utmost importance and only HP offers a full year of support for both systems software and firmware with its SPP. HP Customer Support will only suggest you update to the latest version or apply the relevant critical update when they are known to solve the issue reported, enabling you to skip unneeded updates.
To learn more about these and the MANY other capabilities of SPP and HP SUM 5 check out HP Systems Software Management.
With HP SUM, we will continue to enhance robustness, speed and scalability, so continue to follow this blog and check out the web site on a regular basis for future version information.
*3x faster online updates and a 93% reduction in server downtime for over 95% of the HP server install base. Online support of 100% of the portfolio will occur in Q1 2012. Figures based on internal testing.
