Equallogic releases Firmware 4.0.1
Wow, now thats a first. Today I visited the equallogic support portal and wondered why there again was a new firmware available. A few days ago 3.3.3 was posted and NOW..wow...there you go with 4.0.1. The features are amazing, you can now assign a special port just for managing and the most important thing in my opinion is the smart new restart function when updating to a newer version, it will smartly flip between the two controllers so you won´t have any downtime at all. Pretty smart. Also there were some improvements in Replication and other minor changes, also the new 5500 48Gig array is now supported. Also supported is now iSCSI IPv6 support. Now be aware of that: The update could easily take about 40 minutes, don´t get nervous, it´ll continue smart and clean till the end and you just have to restart which requires about 1,5 mins.Fair enough if you configured your qlogic devices in your ESX machines like I told you in one of my previous posts. I updated all my 4 eql arrays this night without problems.
4 comments:
Amazing isn't it... 3.3.3 is a patch intended for people not ready to update to 4.0.1. V4.0.1 is the latest greatest. It's good to see that Dell hasn't slowed these guys down at all...
yeah i also see it that way. seems like the dell guys let the eql guys do all their stuff like before the acquisition.
Hey guys, we have two PS300e's running old firmware (3.2.1).. how have you found 4.0.1 since you installed it?
I'm holding back from 4.0.1 at the moment as there are some upgrade bugs apparently, this is from the EqualLogic site....
Recently issues have been found during the update process from earlier releases to V4.0.1. Dell EqualLogic will release a V4.0.2 kit later in October 2008 that addresses these update issues.
* In single member groups, all iSCSI connections will be on Ethernet port zero until the array is restarted again. This is due to an issue network load balancing. While this does not affect normal operations it will affect performance and availability.
* Longer reboot times on the first restart after the upgrade in some configurations
* Long update times when updating Type 5 controllers without notification
If you have not updated to V4.0.1 we suggest you wait until V4.0.2 is released.
If you have updated to V4.0.1, please contact support so they can check if you have experienced the network load balancing issue. This issue can be correct with the help of support without restarting the array.
stuart,
4.0.1 is running fine but the replication makes us headache becuase it is now thin provisioned and this cannot be turned off. it may be changed in 4.0.2. the load balancing bug is harmless - just restart the array or issue a special command and everything is alright. and btw: it is exatly vice versa as stated on the eql page: ONLY multi member groups are affected. single member groups are NOT affected.
regards,
Joerg
Post a Comment