Upgrade firmware in HP servers using HP Service Pack for ProLiant and Cobbler

I you have to upgrade the firmware (iLO, BIOS, Disk firmware, NIC firmware, ...) inside many HP servers and for this task it's useful to use HP Service Pack for ProLiant (HP SPP).

This iso file contains the firmware for all supported HP servers. The easiest way is to boot from the ISO file and upgrade the server where it is running. If you have many servers - it's better to use automated way using PXEboot + Cobbler + NFS.

I would like to share few steps how I did it in my environment.

Server RAID/BIOS changes using HP Scripting toolkit and Cobbler

I have to take care about few enclosures with HP ProLiant BL685c and HP ProLiant BL460c blades (both G1). They are quite old now, but still can do a good job. Because there were no operating system I have no idea how the RAID or BIOS is configured. Obviously I want to have it configured the same and I really don't want to go through all of them one by one and configure it manually.

Lucky for me there is a HP Scripting Toolkit (or HP SmartStart Scripting Toolkit) which can boot over PXE and get/set the BIOS/RAID configuration.
It is handy if especially if you have a new servers without OS installed.

Let's see how you can install and configure Cobbler, NFS, PXE, tftpboot and HP Scripting Toolkit to modify the BIOS/RAID information on the server.