[Info-vax] HDD Storage Firmware (Was: Re: Main cabinet fault indicator on an MSA1000)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-08-29 16:29:01 +0000, Rich Jordan said:

> Was there any means for doing the disk firmware updates from VMS?

AFAIK, no.

OpenVMS did have firmware tools useful for older DEC SCSI disks lurking 
in SYS$ETC:, and MSA$UTIL could flash some storage controller firmware, 
but AFAIK these tools were never re-purposed for newer disks.

I'd certainly wanted to see platform-independent updates (and one that 
preferably didn't need a Windows license and a Windows-capable system) 
and/or platform firmware-based firmware updates become available, but 
the hardware vendor involved has chosen to use kits specific to 
operating systems.  This for the platform firmware (UEFI, etc), the 
host controller firmware, any outboard controllers, and the storage 
device firmware.

The usual outcome of this process was and remains unsurprising: most of 
the firmware kits were and are available for Microsoft Windows, and 
potentially also a subset of the kits were available some combinations 
of other choices.

VSI will be facing some similar discussions and debates with x86-64 
sometime down the road.  The updates will almost certainly initially be 
left up to the platform vendor and that vendor's tooling, which means 
most kits will expect or require Microsoft Windows.

This is not a trivial problem for an operating system vendor to solve, 
either.  Far from it.



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