This blog post was originally written by Aditi Satam. Send your suggestions or comments to WinServerBlogs@dell.com.
Cluster-Aware Updating (CAU) is a feature for failover clusters that was introduced in Windows Server 2012 which orchestrates the software / firmware update process on clustered systems. The orchestration process will automatically move the workloads to other cluster nodes, so that a system can be patched and rebooted if required. Its main purpose is to maintain high availability of the workload while updating the servers as well as scheduling periodic updates to improve IT management processes. For detailed information please click here.
One of the requirements to successfully configure Dell firmware updates using CAU is to create a SMB share with all the firmware update packages or Dell DUPs. This SMB share can be on a node that is not a part of the cluster or that is a part of the cluster. If SMB share is on one of the nodes in the cluster, you may encounter the following error in the Applications and Services log under Microsoft-Windows-ClusterAwareUpdating/Admin event logs and CAU process may fail. The error may be something like the one below:
Failed to start the hotfix installer. Installer path: "$update$". Parameters: /s . Update path: \\Caucluster-n1\dell_update_dup\CAUHotfix_All\Dell-Dups-Rule1\BIOS_TXX7G_WN64_2.0.23.EXE. HRESULT 2147746818, exit code: 0.
This issue may be resolved by enabling the SMB encryption on the share. It can be done as follows:
To enable SMB Encryption for the SMB shared folder
Set-SmbShare <ShareName> -EncryptData $true
<ShareName> is the name of the SMB shared folder.
Example: Set-SmbShare DELL_UPDATE_DUP -EncryptData $True
To implement the SMB Encryption in the connections to the SMB share, you can choose the “Require SMB Encryption” in accessing the hotfix root folder option in the CAU UI, or configure the RequireSMBEncryption='True' argument if you are using the Windows PowerShell Cmdlets to configure CAU.
Additional Resources
MMS 2013: Automating Platform Updates for Dell PowerEdge Failover Clusters