BIOS update on Dell PowerEdge R510 server

Server hardware manufacturers are trying to monitor the correct operation of their products. One of these measures is correcting and improving the BIOS 'a. In this article I will explain how to update the BIOS of the Dell PowerEdge series servers from the Fedora distribution kit.

1. Find out the current firmware version and server model

[root@home ~]# smbios-sys-info Libsmbios version: 2.2.28 Product Name: PowerEdge R510 Vendor: Dell Inc. BIOS Version: 1.8.2 System ID: 0x02F1 Service Tag: XXXXXXX Express Service Code: XXXXXXXXXXX Asset Tag: Property Ownership Tag: 

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The current BIOS version 1.8.2.

2. The site support.dell.com/support/DPP/Index.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=biz
We search our server for “Service Tag” and go to the “Drivers & Downloads” tab. In the drop-down list, select "Operating Systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6". Download the latest BIOS'a (a file with the .bin extension) to the server.

3. There are two ways of flashing.
- running bin file

 sh R510_BIOS_NGVY8_LN32_1.9.0.BIN 

- through the smbios-rbu-bios-update utility, but for this it is necessary to perform preparatory work.
install the smbios-utils package

 [root@home ~]# yum install smbios-utils 

unpack the bin-file

 [root@home ~]# mkdir firmware; sh R510_BIOS_NGVY8_LN32_1.9.0.BIN --extract firmware 

We watch information about the new firmware version

 [root@home ~]# smbios-rbu-bios-update --hdr-info=firmware/payload/PER510-010900C.hdr BIOS HDR file information dump. Filename: firmware/payload/PER510-010900C.hdr File magic header: $RBU Header length: 84 Header major version: 2 Header minor version: 0 Number of supported systems: 6 Quick check field: Copyright 2011 Dell Inc. BIOS Version (RAW): <libsmbios_c.rbu_hdr.c_ubyte_Array_3 object at 0x24e8d40> BIOS Version: 1.9.0 Misc flags: 1 Compatibility flags: 91 System ID: 0x02f1 Hardware Revision: 0 System ID: 0x043c Hardware Revision: 0 System ID: 0x0460 Hardware Revision: 0 System ID: 0x0474 Hardware Revision: 0 System ID: 0x0475 Hardware Revision: 0 System ID: 0x048a Hardware Revision: 0 

directly flashing and rebooting the server

 [root@home ~]# smbios-rbu-bios-update --hdr=PER510-010900C.hdr -u --reboot 

after reboot check the current firmware version

 [root@home ~]# smbios-sys-info Libsmbios version: 2.2.28 Product Name: PowerEdge R510 Vendor: Dell Inc. BIOS Version: 1.9.0 System ID: 0x02F1 Service Tag: XXXXXXX Express Service Code: XXXXXXXXXXX Asset Tag: Property Ownership Tag: 

As a result, we get the updated BIOS version 1.9.0.

This way you can flip the BIOS on all servers of the Dell PowerEdge series.