Brocade Fabric OS Encryption Administrator’s Guide Supporting RSA Data Protection Manager (DPM) Environments (Supporting Fabric OS v7.2.0) - Manual (Page 248)

228 Fabric OS Encryption Administrator’s Guide (DPM)
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Firmware upgrade and downgrade considerations
5
Firmware upgrade and downgrade considerations
Before upgrading or downgrading firmware, consider the following:
• The encryption engine and the control processor or blade processor are reset after a firmware
upgrade. Disruption of encryption I/O can be avoided if an HA cluster is configured. If
encryption engines are configured in an HA cluster, perform firmware upgrades one encryption
engine at a time so that the partner switch in the HA cluster can take over I/O by failover during
a firmware upgrade. When switches form a DEK cluster, firmware upgrades should also be
performed one at a time for all switches in the DEK cluster to ensure that a host MPIO failover
path is always available.
• If you are upgrading to Fabric OS 7.2.0 from v7.0.x, you must first upgrade the server to
DPM 3.2 before you can upgrade to Fabric OS 7.2.0.
NOTE
DPM 3.1 server is not compatible with the earlier client. Refer to the “Fabric OS and DPM
Compatibility Matrix” on page 293.
• The following warning can be ignored if the nodes in an EG are running different versions of
Fabric OS.
“2011/04/12-18:41:08, [SPM-1016], 17132, FID 128, WARNING, Security database is out of
sync.”
• A downgrade to Fabric OS 7.0.1 results in the loss of thin provision LUN information.
• When doing a firmware upgrade to Fabric OS 7.0.0 or downgrade from Fabric OS 7.0.0, the
message SPM-1016 will be observed on v7.0.0 nodes in the encryption group (EG) when other
nodes in that EG that are still running versions earlier than Fabric OS 7.0.0. Although this is a
warning message, it is transient and is only observed during a firmware upgrade or downgrade
operation. The message can be ignored.
• Because of the limitations of the RKM 2.1.1 client running Fabric OS 7.0.x or earlier with the
DPM 3.1 server, it is recommended that you upgrade to DPM 3.2 server instead of DPM 3.1.
• Do not try to use the configUpload command from Fabric OS v6.4.0 or later and then use the
configDownload command to Fabric OS v6.3.x or earlier with any Fabric OS v6.4.0 feature in an
enabled state.
• You cannot downgrade to a Fabric OS version prior to v6.2.0.
General guidelines
General guidelines for a firmware upgrade of encryption switches and a DCX Backbone chassis
with encryption blades in encryption groups, HA clusters, and DEK clusters are as follows:
• Upgrade one node at time.
• Do not perform a firmware upgrade when rekey operations and first-time encryption
operations are underway.
• Do not start any manual rekey operations and first-time encryption operations during the
firmware upgrade process for all nodes in the HA/DEK cluster.