[Design] PSU firmware update

[Neeraj Ladkani]

Yes, for Cloud Infra use cases, all firmware updates needs to be live and impact less. Any thoughts on how this can be extended to IPMI ? 

Neeraj

-----Original Message-----
From: Lei YU <mine260309 at gmail.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, June 4, 2019 12:02 AM
To: Neeraj Ladkani <neladk at microsoft.com>
Cc: Andrew Geissler <geissonator at gmail.com>; OpenBMC Maillist <openbmc at lists.ozlabs.org>
Subject: Re: [Design] PSU firmware update

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 2:43 PM Neeraj Ladkani <neladk at microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Are you proposing that if PSU FW is attempted and if system is powered on, the FW update will not start?

Yes, do not perform PSU FW update when the system is powered on, otherwise, it is considered risky.

> We should not tie framework with these requirements.  If this is really required for a particular platform design then vendor specific tool can have right checks before triggering the update.

This is a good point, I would like to know if there are cases that the PSU could be updated safely while the system is powered up.
If there are really such cases, then it's true the framework should not require this, and leave it to vendor-specific tools.

> Also how do we tie this with IPMI?  How does the payload reach BMC and How do we know progress of FW update ?

This design does not involve IPMI at all. The payload is uploaded, processed, and activated by the same interface as BMC code update.
See doc here: https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fopenbmc%2Fdocs%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2Fcode-update%2Fcode-update.md&data=02%7C01%7Cneladk%40microsoft.com%7C8c570de5af934786e65d08d6e8ba9c02%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636952285510094921&sdata=H2v988%2Fgp5%2FSbpn33LA7eOfE55T5duN%2BAl3yDtcfKRs%3D&reserved=0
So you could use REST APIs or Redfish to do the PSU code update.