HPE iLO fails to update firmware of directly connected drives using vLCM

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Attempting to upgrade firmware of hard drives directly connected to an onboard SAS/SATA controller on HPE servers using HPE's iLO Amplifier HSM and vLCM fails without reporting an error but leaves the firmware unchanged. SPPs/VUPs that include updates to drive firmware will appear to install successfully but actually leave the drive firmware non-compliant.
If disk drives are directly connected to an on-board SAS/SATA disk controller, with the iLO Amplifier Pack installed, vSphere LifeCycle Manager (vLCM) remediation does not fail, but the ESXi host is reported as non-compliant afterward, because disk drive firmware was not updated.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x

Cause

This is a known iLO limitation. HPE does not plan to change this for vSphere 7.0 releases.
vLCM relies on HPE's "iLO Amplifier" or "OneView" HSM to deliver FW updates on HPE servers.  However, HPE does not support using iLO Amplifier to do on-line firmware remediation of directly-connected drives.
Drives should be connected via HPE Smart Array controller. For more details, refer to HPE Documentation

Resolution

Disk drive firmware on directly connected drives can only be updated in off-line mode.
To workaround this issue, boot into the SPP-VUP(for example SPP-VUP10.2020_0407.33.iso) image, or equivalent and update the drive firmware in "offline" mode, after which the rest of the system can be updated using vLCM as usual to bring the host into compliance.