Dell Products Inc.

Joel Miller

Bing Liu

Deepu M Sreedhar

Daniel Savilonis

A request is received to upgrade firmware of a set of disk array enclosures (DAEs) in a storage system. Each DAE is chained to another DAE by first and second chains. The first chain provides an active path from a host server to the DAEs. The second chain provides a secondary path from the host server to the DAEs. A determination is made as to whether the secondary path is operational. If the secondary path is operational, data of the active path is failed over to the secondary path, the active path now being an inactive path. Firmware along the inactive path is upgraded. If the secondary path is not operational, the request to upgrade firmware is denied.

Framework for upgrading firmware of disk array enclosures (DAES)

A request is received to upgrade firmware for disk array enclosures (DAEs). Each DAE is reachable by a host server using first and second paths. The first path extends from a first port of a first HBA of the host server to each of a set of first input/output modules (IOMs) in the DAEs. The first IOMs have first SAS expanders to which storage disks are connected. A flag is set in firmware of each first IOM that causes SMP and SES protocol services of a DAE to mark each respective storage disk connected to each respective SAS expander of the first SAS expanders as vacant. During the firmware upgrade, advertising to a SAS driver topology change events indicating that a storage disk has been removed or added is withheld based on the flag.

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Vacaville, CA, United States of America

Joel Miller