Secure Connection Failed With HP BL460c Blades in a C7000

I recently picked up some used blade servers on ebay. The problem was though the onboard administrator on the C7000 recognized them, neither Firefox nor IE could manage the web component of the blade as the certificate was long expired and from an untrusted CA (HP's self signed CA.)

The error message was:

*my ilo site* uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown. (Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)

Adding an exception for the certificate failed. I found this link:

Mozilla's support site

Basically, you close firefox, delete cert8.db and start firefox again. After that, add the exception.

Updating Firmware on HP C7000 Blade Chassis

I recently had to update an HP C7000 series blade chassis. The onboard administrators were both on 1.3 firmware, and a new G7 blade required firmware in the late 2.x line of firmware. I had seen discussions of whether it was safe to upgrade only the OA firmware and not the blades. I contacted HP support, and they said that though while not ideal, you could safely update just the OA firmware.

I first ran the HP Proliant Service Pack ISO: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/spp/index.html

The HP SUM utility was not able to upgrade the firmware, due to a web API error. I tried several times. The fix that worked for me was to download the last of the Smart Update ISO images, here:


http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/bladesystemupdate.html

I then used that version of HP SUM to update the C7000 OA to version 9.3. From there, I was able to update the firmware using the Proliant SP disk I linked above. I also used the SP disk to update the ILO's on the blades. I didn't update the firmware on the interconnect devices (in my case, a Cisco switch and a Brocade fibre switch) nor did I update the bios of the blades, although that was certainly a possibility.