ISS Technology Update, Volume 7 Number 5 - Newsletter

ISS Technology Update Volume 7, Number 5

What changes do you think are necessary for HP to remain the leader in industry-standard servers?

First, we need to continue to differentiate our products from those of our competitors. We cannot rely on the strategy to have

what our competitors also have. We need to continue to develop products with features our customers want but our competitors

cannot provide.

Second, the industry-standard server business model has worked in the past for high-volume and low-cost products, but this

business model may not suit customer requirements for the future. High-performance and high-reliability may be the model for

the future. I think HP should continue to invest in Research and Development for future server products in areas such as high-

speed interconnects, efficient power management, parallel processing, and system reliability.

Deploying HPSUM firmware and software updates

HP Smart Update Manager (HPSUM) is a utility for updating firmware and software smart components on HP ProLiant servers,

options, and enclosures. HPSUM supports firmware and software update deployment to target servers running Microsoft®

Windows® Server 2003 (x86 and x64 Editions), Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 (x86 and x64 Editions), Red Hat

Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 3, 4, and 5, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 9 and 10. Upgrades can be deployed from

Windows® XP and Windows Vista® workstations to remote targets.

HPSUM includes many features:

• Support for local and remote (one-to-many) deployments

• Support for local deployment to bare metal through boot from USB Key or Firmware Maintenance CD

• Support for remote deployment to bare metal targets when used in conjunction with the SmartStart Scripting Toolkit (SSSTK),

iLO Virtual Media Support, or BladeSystem Firmware Deployment Tool

• Available on the ProLiant Essentials Firmware Maintenance CD

• The deployment engine for Version Control in Windows

• Integrated with the Remote Deployment Program (RDP) as of Version 3.10 release

HPSUM provides the following firmware flash support:

• System ROM

• RILOE II/iLO/iLO2

• Smart Array controllers

• SAS hard drives

• SATA hard drives (offline only)

• SCSI hard drives (offline only)

• MSA 20, 500, 500 G2, 60 and 70 enclosures

• BladeSystem c-Class Onboard Administrators (OA)

NIC Firmware

• QLogic Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (offline only)

• Emulex Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (offline only)

• Tape firmware

Consider the following best practices when using HPSUM:

• No more than 16 servers or OAs should be grouped together for an installation

• Start with the latest Firmware Maintenance CD to ensure that you have the latest version of HPSUM for firmware updates

• Always download the latest firmware from the