Once again we upgraded our firmware live, we saw about 9 dropped packets and that was that (well below the timeout threshold) thanks again EqualLogic!
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Michael Ellerbeck 
Hey Michael,
Did the upgrade last week myself.
We were still running 4.1.7 so I sent EQL a mail to get confirmation on the upgrade path I chose. (can’t upgrade directly to 5.0.2)
A couple of hours later, to my surprise they called me !(yes, a call instead of a reply on my mail) .
Great service, upgrade was breeze.
If you are on ESX4.1 (enterprise), check out this post by VirtualizationBuster:
http://www.virtualizationbuster.com/?p=380
It shows how to install the new MEM module.
EQL did a great job on configuring the ESX servers trough a script, honestly, my 2year old could almost do it.
Btw, You’ve been praising Veeam a lot lately, got a question.
Are you able to take application consistent backup’s with veeam nowadays?
I know Veeam has it’s own vss writer but i’m not sure how well it works.
Regards,
Patrick
Same here. Went smooth. I was a bit of a victim of my own security, as I had to jump through several hoops to get my firmware updated at my CoLo without going there. To be on the safe side, I also shut down my VM’s that had guest attached VM’s. I also moved my DC’s to the same host, so AD wouldn’t try to sync across hosts that may have not had communication with the SAN at various times. Not sure if it was necessary, but it sounded good.
I am planning on going to ESX4.1 have you upgraded? Did you go the ESXi route? And I am very excited to install the MEM module! Getting the SAN up to 5.0.2 was one of my first steps!
For us Veeam is a very, very good fit! Yes it does do application consistent backups. More info here http://www.veeam.com/blog/the-great-vss-debate.html
Some of the new features they have introduced are phenomenal! http://www.tuxyturvy.com/blog/index.php?/archives/70-Veeam-Backup-The-Next-Generation.html
We have been very pleased and getting more so with each release!
yes, I went the ESXi way, since future releases will be ESXi based.
I reinstalled the servers from scratch, installation is pretty fast, I didn’t do it automatically trough scripting cause I only have 4 servers.
The only issue I had was the Dell DRAC card, iso images would’t boot trough the virtual media, solved by upgrading to the latest firmware.
So no complaints about 4.1i, serial card on the host is supported now, which was a prerequisite for us.
Just make sure you upgrade your vcenter first, but if you follow the upgrade guide you should be good.
Thanks for the info on Veeam, I’m gonna look into that.
Regards, Patrick
Hey Patrick, thanks for mentioning your issues with your IDRAC update problems. I have some M600 and M610s that are finicky on that as well. I can update the IDRACs fine, but can’t get Dell’s bootable media (SBUU) to work with the update package (SUU) over the virtual media so that I can get all of the other stuff updated (embedded NICs, etc.). Agh…