Upgrading the NIC Firmware

Upgrade the firmware to ensure stable running of NICs and reduce the server downtime caused by hardware faults. The new firmware version may include optimizations to network performance, thereby improving network throughput and offering efficient network data processing on the server.

Perform the following operations to upgrade the server NIC firmware. The SP382-CX5 NIC is used as an example.

1. Obtain the NIC firmware and upload it to the server.
   1. Download the firmware version corresponding to the SP382-CX5 NIC from the Huawei enterprise website.
   2. Download the firmware package (for example, NIC-SP382-CX5-FW-16.32.1010-ARM.zip) as prompted and upload it to the server.

      https://support.huawei.com/enterprise/en/computing/taishanserver-idriver-pid-251215329/software/258603967?idAbsPath=fixnode01%7C23710424%7C251364417%7C9856629%7C251215329

      

      

      This section uses the SP382-CX5 NIC as an example. You can use the Network Adapter Model tab page of the iBMC to query the actual NIC model.

2. Decompress the firmware package on the server.

   unzip NIC-SP382-CX5-FW-16.32.1010-ARM.zip

3. Query the current NIC firmware version. Replace Network port name with an actual one.
   1. Check the network port name.

      ip a

   2. Query the NIC firmware version.

      ethtool -i Network_port_name

      

4. Upgrade the NIC firmware.

   flint -d 01:00.1 -i fw-ConnectX5-rel-16_32_1010_Huawei_SP382-FlexBoot-3.6.502_4119_14_25_17_RELEASE_X64_AARCH64_2021Dec21.bin b

   

   The CX5 NIC has two network ports. Upgrade either of them.

5. Restart the NIC for the upgrade to take effect.

   mlxfwreset -d 01:00.1 r

   The NIC firmware upgrade is complete.