Home > Storage > PowerScale (Isilon) > Product Documentation > Management and Migration > Dell PowerScale: Non-Disruptive Upgrade Best Practices > Firmware upgrade
Prior to OneFS 8.2.0, the only way to upgrade node firmware was through a rolling (serial) firmware upgrade process. Serial firmware upgrades have the least impact to business continuity, yet require extended maintenance windows that increase linearly with cluster size.
In OneFS 8.2.0, a new parameter --simultaneous is introduced for the CLI command isi upgrade firmware. This parameter along with –nodes-to-upgrade allows upgrading firmware on multiple PowerScale nodes simultaneously. OneFS will check if the simultaneous upgrade parameter is valid or not. The following is an example where node 1 and node 2 are PowerScale node pairs. OneFS will stop the upgrade process when there is an attempt to start a simultaneous firmware upgrade for these two nodes. This is to ensure data integrity and that we do not update peer nodes simultaneously.
# isi upgrade cluster firmware start --no-verify --no-burn --simultaneous -- nodes-to-upgrade=1,2
You are about to start a Simultaneous Firmware UPGRADE, are you sure? (yes/[no]): yes
Invalid nodes specified for simultaneous upgrade. Please run isi_upgrade_helper for possible valid commands
To support simultaneous firmware upgrades, a new tool, isi_upgrade_helper, is also included in the OneFS 8.2.0. This tool can help end users decide how to use the newly introduced simultaneous firmware upgrade mechanism to meet their business requirements. This tool will give three firmware upgrade recommendations:
Within each recommendation, the output of the command - isi_upgrade_helper also includes the corresponding CLI commands which can be used directly for firmware upgrades.
From OneFS 9.0, the tool isi_upgrade_helper is removed and the node firmware upgrade process has been changed. For details, see the section Node firmware upgrade workflow from OneFS 9.0.0.