Availability Guide for Change Management

Making System Software and Hardware Changes
Online
Availability Guide for Change Management–125506
3-6
Updating Firmware Online
Considerations for Adding, Upgrading, and Moving Disk Drives
The following list describes considerations and limitations you should be aware of when
adding, upgrading, and moving disk drives online:
•
The $SYSTEM disk and any alternate system volume must be configured by
SYSGENR. You cannot make changes to the system disk online.
•
When upgrading a disk volume from one drive (or drive type) to another, you must
back up or otherwise copy the data from the original drive and restore it to the new
drive after the upgrade is complete.
•
When moving or upgrading an existing disk drive, you must stop all affected
processes that use the disk drive (or redirect them to another disk drive), take down
all paths to the disk drive, and put the disk drive in the hard down state.
Updating Firmware Online
Many circuit boards and devices in NonStop systems contain firmware. Firmware is a
type of microcode—that is, program instructions residing in nonvolatile storage media
such as EEPROM (electronically erasable programmable read-only memory) or
NVRAM (nonvolatile random access memory). Microcode can be downloaded or
updated from disk. The two principal types of microcode are:
•
Firmware or bootstrap code, sometimes called “boot PROM code.” Boot code for a
device starts or “boots” the device and may also contain power-on diagnostics.
•
Operational microcode for “downloadable” controllers. During a system load or
while the controller is being loaded, the operational microcode is downloaded from
storage into volatile memory.
When You Need to Update Firmware
Firmware updates are required for processor boards, power supplies, control panels, and
many I/O controller boards and interprocessor communication devices. In general, you
should check the status of firmware and update any firmware that is out-of-date
whenever new hardware or software is installed on your system. Check firmware status
after installing any of the following:
•
New hardware products that contain firmware, such as processor boards or I/O
controllers
•
New operating system releases
•
Interim product modifications (IPMs)
•
Any replacement component that contains firmware