Upgrading Dell iDRAC version may cause cluster firmware update failure due to presentation of previously unseen hardware

Products

• VMware
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

To resolve firmware remediation failures in clusters with older Gen 13 Dell servers.

Symptoms:
Updating firmware in a cluster of Dell hosts containing one or more Gen 13 servers with iDRAC versions before 2.70.70 using the vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) Hardware Support Manager integration fails due to reports of host update failures.

Environment

VMware vSphere 7.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs as the iDRAC firmware prior to v2.70.70 may report IDSM storage not previously reported. If the IDSM firmware is out of compliance with the firmware package specified in the cluster's desired state, the host firmware will appear out of compliance even after the initial firmware remediation has successfully updated the iDRAC firmware. Failure of a firmware update on a single host will stop further host updates in the cluster.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, select every Gen 13 host in the cluster individually for remediation and remediate the firmware to update the iDRAC to v2.70.70 or later. Once the entire cluster is running at least v2.70.70, do a full-cluster compliance scan and remediation should succeed as the new IDSM device firmware will not be included in the remediation.

Additional Information

Note: This issue only impacts installations from "Firmware and Drivers Addon" cluster images using vLCM, introduced in 7.0.