Updated HP Proliant DL and BL Drivers/Firmware

HP has released a new version (2012.08.0) of their “HP Service Pack for ProLiant”, a Sept 2012 revision. For those of you unfamiliar with their packaging changes, this is a consolidated bootable ISO that does both offline and online firmware/driver updates. It really simplifies the updating of HP firmware on ProLiant servers, and is much faster than previous methods. You can review the full release notes here. To download the HP Service Pack for ProLiant, go here.

Directly from the release notes the major changes are:

Added support for new HP ProLiant Gen 8 servers and options

HP ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Server
HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8 Server
HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Server (offline firmware only)
HP Smart Array P721m Controller
HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 560SFP+ Adapter

Added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3
Added support for VMware vSphere 5.1
Updated to HP Smart Update Manager 5.2.0
UNC name for repositories on Microsoft Windows® systems
HP SUM is also delivered as an RPM package on the Linux SDR

Also hot off the presses is a major update to the HP C-class virtual connect BladeSystem. You can download the 3.70 release here. For the release notes, you can click here. As always with HP firmware updates, I would NOT run out and immediately update your production systems. I would wait a few weeks and monitor the forums to see if anyone has major issues. 

Version 3.70 of Virtual Connect contains support for the following enhancements:

Support for new hardware:

HP ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Server series
HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Workstation series
HP Virtual Connect Flex-10/10D Module
HP 7m C-series Active Copper SFP+ cables (QK701A)
HP 10m C-series Active Copper SFP+ cables (QK702A)
Cisco 7m copper active Twinax cables (SFP-H10GB-ACU7M)
Cisco 10m copper active Twinax cables (SFP-H10GB-ACU10M)

Virtual Connect Direct-Attach Fibre Channel for HP P10000 3PAR Storage Systems, HP 3PAR T-Class and F-Class Storage Systems
Manageability enhancements:

VCM GUI access to telemetry information
Advanced telemetry and statistics for Link Aggregation Groups and FlexNICs
GUI access to the FC Port Statistics for HP FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port Modules
Improvements to the Statistics Throughout display and data collection
Display of factory default MACs and WWNs in server profiles
Added an FC/FCoE “Connect To” field to help identify how server ports are connected to the uplink ports
LLDP enhancements to more easily identify VC Ethernet modules on the network
Improvements to the display of the MAC Address table to show the network name and VLAN ID where the MAC address was learned, as well as display of the LAG membership table

VCM GUI/CLI task progress activity indicator for predefined VCM operations
Security enhancements:

Support for 2048 bit SSL certificates and configurable SSL-CSR
Activity logging improvements for TACACS+ accounting
Option to disable local account access when LDAP, RADIUS, or TACACS+ authentication is enabled
Increased the default VCM local user account minimum required password length
SNMP access security to prevent access from unauthorized management station