HPE SPP Update Stuck on "Waiting for Smart Update"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to run an HPE Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) update on a host (e.g., VMware ESXi), the installation hangs indefinitely.

• SUT Status: The Smart Update Tool (sut -status) shows Deploy:Pending and Baseline Version: Waiting for staging.

• Service Status: Checking the Agentless Management Service Daemon (./amsd status) reveals that the core processes (amsd-amsd and amsd-smad) are not running, even after a manual restart of the service.

[ESXi:/etc/init.d] sut -status
System Update Manager...................: HPE OneView
Update Manager URL......................: https://##.##.##.##
Deploy Type.............................: FirmwareAndOSDrivers
Task Status.............................: Bios:N/A; LocalStorage:N/A;Deploy:Pending
Staging Directory.......................: /tmp/stagingdirectory
Baseline URI............................: None
Baseline Version........................: Waiting for staging
Mode of Operation.......................: AutoDeploy
Polling Interval In Minutes.............: 5  

[ESXi:/etc/init.d] ./amsd status
amsd-smarev is running ########## 1
amsd-ahsd is running ########## 1
amsd-amsd is not running ########## 1
amsd-smad is not running ########## 1

Cause

The HPE SPP utility, Smart Update Tool (SUT), and Agentless Management Service Daemon (amsd) are proprietary HPE software components responsible for communication between the OS and the iLO management processor.

In this scenario, the amsd daemon repeatedly crashes or fails to maintain an active state, breaking the communication loop required to stage and execute the firmware deployment. Because this failure lies entirely within proprietary vendor-specific tooling, this issue falls outside our organization's standard scope of support.

Resolution

Because this issue involves third-party proprietary firmware and server management tools, our internal support teams cannot debug the crashing amsd daemon.

Please follow the steps below to escalate this issue to the hardware vendor:

1. Engage HPE Support: Open a formal support ticket with HPE Hardware Support.

2. Provide Diagnostic Logs: Collect and attach an Active Health System (AHS) log from the server's iLO interface, alongside the command outputs listed in the Symptoms section of this article.