DELL versus CISCO server firmware management

DELL and CISCO firmware management philosophies are very different.

DELL has server oriented approach (similar to HP) and CISCO has network centric approach.

DELL System and Firmware Management

DELL System and Firmware Management Approach is year by year better and better but in my opinion still not optimal. But the future is bright and happy J

We have lot of possibilities how to do firmware update and unfortunately sometimes you have to test all of them to be successful L

12-th generation of servers is far the best because lifecycle controller is significantly faster and less problematic than in 11^th generation.

I don’t want to go to deeply into specific firmware update problems – and usually there are some ;-) - so I’ll keep it in more general.

CISCO System and Firmware Management

CISCO UCS has single management software for servers embedded in the hardware UCSM (UCS Manager). It is running inside network interconnects (Fabric Interconnects) and because they are two interconnects it is in high availability cluster (active/passive). UCS Manager allow you to do all UCS configurations and also firmware management of all components (Server adapters, Server BIOSes, IO Modules, Fabric Interconnects and UCS Manager itself).

CISCO release firmware packages which must be downloaded into UCS and these firmware’s can be applied. Upgrade order is very important – starting from IOMs, then Fabric Interconnects and lastly UCS Manager.

Server and server adapter firmware management can be included into server profiles. Server profiles is something like AIM personas. It is a logical representation of the server and BIOS + firmware versions can be specified there. When Server profile is applied (associated) to the server then BIOS + firmware is upgraded or downgraded as defined in the profile.

Server upgrade procedure is done out-of-band and server cannot run operating system – therefore maintenance window has to be planned. It takes a while. Internally it works over PXE boot. Server is automatically reconfigured to boot over PXE where PXE and TFTP is provided internally by UCS Manager. Upgraded server boot special linux distribution (CISCO call it PNU linux) and firmware packages are applied in this temporarily running linux system.  After upgrade the server boot order is changed back and server boots normal operating system.    

COMPARISON

Both firmware management approaches are totally different. CISCO has centralized system leveraging internal PXE/TFTP where DELL has distributed system where lot of lifecycle controllers are orchestrated by some 1:many management software.

When I work for CISCO lot of customers were really scare to do UCS upgrade by them self. I can understand it because CISCO UCS is not simple system. CISCO UCS is unified system and when you make mistake during fabric interconnect upgrade you can be in troubles. Therefore customers usually engaged CISCO Advanced Services or certified partners.

When I work for DELL Services I had also several engagements for firmware upgrades because DELL customers are not aware about OpenManage framework and various firmware possibilities.

If DELL customer want to do firmware management by them self I usually do 3 day System Management workshop engagement to explain them practically the architecture and system management possibilities.

CISCO advantage

·         Unified and centralized firmware management

·         Firmware can be defined in Service Profiles

CISCO disadvantages

·         Centralized and complex system – therefore customers are afraid to do upgrade by them self

·         Proprietary system even inside using standard protocols like PXE/TFTP

·         Longer server downtime – I don’t know how it is today but 3 years ago CISCO hadn’t operating system update packages for BIOS and firmware (something like DUPs) – disadvantage mitigation: they expect some form of cluster to eliminate downtimes

DELL advantage

·         Advantages of distributed system – if one server upgrade fails it doesn’t  impact whole system

·         Dell Update Packages (DUP) which can be applied via running operating system – OMSA

·         Out-of-band upgrades via lifecycle controller – firmware staging and application after next server reboot

·         Open system from management point of view – WS-MAN, racadm

·          

DELL disadvantage

·         Lot of software components customer must be aware (DELL Repository Manager, Open Manage Essentials, Lifecycle controller, CMC,  …) – but it is necessary to support all environments

·         Sometimes it doesn’t work as expected and you have to use another tool or upgrade Lifecycle controller to higher version and so on – it is much better on 12^th server generation and iDrac 7 and OME 1.2+

Hopefully we will do continuous improvements  in this area.

The best and most optimal DELL Firmware management strategy really depends  on customer environment. It depends on following:

How many servers do they have?

Do they want to use 1:many firmware management like OpenManage Essentials, Altiris, MS System Center, VMware OpenManage Integration?

Do they want to integrate it with some existing system management (Microsoft, VMware)  and configuration management?

And we have to show to our customers how it works. Think about Proof of Concepts.

I understand benefits of both approaches and nobody can say exactly one is better than other. As always – it depends.