We've got a Dell M610 blade with VMware ESXi 4 installed and we need to update it's BIOS to the latest version.
Unfortunately, Dell only makes available a Windows (.exe) and Linux (.bin) versions of the BIOS update program (as well as a bootable DOS floppy version that is too big to fit on a 1.44MB floppy!).
We've tried using various "LiveCD" versions of linux distributions but keep running into errors. Anyone out there with experience with Dell blades who could give us a hint or two to get this working?
Thanks a lot, in advance.
Joe
Best Answer
The M610 (and all Dell 11G or later servers) has a built in UEFI based utility called the Unified Server Configurator (USC) that you can boot into (by hitting F10 at startup) that includes the ability to download and upgrade the BIOS. There are full instructions on how to use it in this Dell support document. The appropriate OMSA Live CD will do the trick but keeping track of the correct versions for all platforms can be a pain and the USC is the direction Dell intends to go for all hardware management updates in future.