upgrading TS3500 Library/drive Firmware

[nahmad]

Hi There

I want to upgrade TS3500 Library/drive Firmware as IBM is pushing to the clients these days, I have few questions please :

1) Can I upgrade both Library and drives at the same time ? When there different drives type LTO3/4 and 5 ?

To dowload is info central ok or any other website ?

Thanks in advance

Nahmad

[moon-buddy]

Pay IBM to do this.

If you do this yourself, you may regret it. I have been in the hardware arena for a long time and there are things like this one that needs specialty tools and knowledge. One false move and you will end up with a big paper weight.

[Paradox667]

Also be aware that the drivers (assuming a windows environment) may have issues with firmware on different drives.
So it pays to do a single drive or two at a time (depending on the library size) and ensure you can maintain connectivity.

From experience I've done drive firmware using IBM Tape tools (ITDT) but have always left the firmware of the library to IBM.

[nathrix]

I'm planning on doing the same today.
I have in the past updated the firmware of the drives (12 x LTO3 and 12 x LTO4 in a non-ALMS TSM3500 Library["Advanced Library Management System is Disabled" is shown on the welcome screen of your library to see if ALMS is enabled]) first using itdt, which is usually a painless process. I would then move on to upgrading the library firmware by Launching the Firmware Update Wizard AFTER I have downloaded the latest library firmware on my desktop and made a backup of NVRAM, see bellow.

Edit: Above environment is AIX
Run a backup of the nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM) :
Select Service —> Download Library Logs.
The Download Library Logs screen displays a list of devices and logs that you can download. They include event logs, servo logs, NVRAM event logs, Fatal Exception logs, and so forth.

Select the log that you want to download
Select Download. If you select NVRAM Backup/Memory Dump, the library attempts to get a snapshot of the current library configuration.
Specify the directory to which you want to download the log.
Select Save.