I found plenty of posts with scripts that automated the firmware upgrade for UCS servers running VMware ESXi. I did however not think they were “safe” enough, so I wrote my own.
It will update the firmware of all the hosts in the specified cluster, one host at a time.
It requires UCS Powertool 2.x and VMware PowerCLI 6.x. It logs the relevant steps with time stamps, so you’ll know whats happening.
It does the following:
1. Get the ESXi-hosts in the cluster to work in.
2. Dismounts VMware tools(would prevent putting a host in maintenance mode) on VMs running on the host.
3. Takes the first(added to the cluster, not name) host and puts it in maintenance mode.
4. Records the MAC address of vmnic0 for that host.
5. Shuts down the host.
6. Checks in UCS Manager which Service Profile matches that MAC address.
7. Verifies that the matching server is powered off.
8. Applies the firmware policy specified.
9. Acknowledges the reboot.
10. Waits until the server operational states goes from “config” to “ok”.
11. Waits for the server to reconnect in vCenter.
12. Exits the host from maintenance mode.
13. Repeats the process from step 2 with the rest of the hosts in the cluster.