Released today, is version three of the Dell Updates tool for SMS. Also released by Dell today was a notification that a small number of drives with the following part numbers:
FD457 - Model 8K036L0021451 - 36GB 15K 68 pin
CD809 -Model 8K036J002135E - 36GB 15K 80 pin
GD086 -Model 8K073L0041452 - 73GB 15K 68 pin
FD458 - Model 8K073J004135F - 73GB 15K 80 pin
YC951 - Model 8J073L0020851 - 73GB 10K 68 pin
GD084 - Model 8J073J002075E - 73GB 10K 80 pin
YC953 - Model 8K147L0081653 - 146GB 15K 68 pin
GD088 - Model 8K147J008155G - 146GB 15K 80 pin
CD807 - Model 8J147L0040852 - 146GB 10K 68 pin
YC952 - Model 8J147J004075F - 146GB 10K 80 pin
FD456 - Model 8J300L0080853 - 300GB 10K 68 pin
CD808 - Model 8J300J008075G - 300GB 10K 80 pin
Could fail after long use. See below.
Urgent Update - PowerEdge/PowerVault - Hard Disk Drive Timeout
Dear Valued Dell Customer:
Failure analysis and symptom
During Dell's long life testing, our quality failure analysis indicated that a small number of the hard disk drives have a firmware bug that causes the drives to timeout.
Under certain circumstances, the hard drives may report "offline" due to a timeout condition. If the drive is unable to complete commands, this may result in the controller reporting the hard disk drive "offline." The primary failure modes have been the hard disk drives failing to successfully rebuild and also the hard disk drives failing after a rebuild completed.
The firmware may be found at www.support.dell.com. Type "Blackbird" or "Genesis" in the search field. Select and click the issue relating to ".hard drives going offline due to a time out condition." You will see instructions for downloading and installing the firmware update.
Dell Recommendation
Dell understands that some customers value preemptive notification of possible issues, even prior to conclusive analysis. Therefore, Dell is actively informing potentially affected customers. Dell considers this as an "Urgent Update" and recommends proactively updating the hard disk drive firmware on the systems listed above to avoid any interruptions.
The lifetime impact of this failure mode varies with enterprise-dependent variables. Dell recommends that you enroll at our Technical Update web site for the most current product information at www.support.dell.com/technicalupdate . If you have any questions or need any additional assistance with this matter, please contact Dell at (866) 849-3692.
Original source:
Overview
SMS 2003 Inventory Tool for Dell Updates is an add-on to SMS 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) that enables customers to use the SMS 2003 Software Update Management feature to update their Dell servers. Customers will be able to deploy BIOS, firmware, and driver updates to their Dell servers using the same process that they use for deploying security and other updates with SMS.
SMS 2003 Inventory Tool for Dell Update includes the following components:
Setup – Windows Installer based setup that allows SMS administrator to install all required components on the SMS site server.
Inventory Tool for Dell update (scan tool) – this tool is being built using SDK components provided by Dell Inc. It scans a Dell server for installed and missing updates, just like MBSA scans the computer for Microsoft security updates.
Sync tool for Dell update – this tool downloads a catalog from Dell’s website on a recurring schedule. This catalog describes all published Dell updates.
Update to Distribute Software Update Wizard (DSUW) – Setup will install an update to DSUW to show new UI that allows to manually import multiple component updates contained within a single system update.
Version 3.0 must be installed to coincide with work with the latest Dell catalog.
Download details: Systems Management Server 2003 Inventory Tool for Dell Update.
