Hello and welcome to a neat little article on updating Brocade SAN switch firmware to the latest FOS (Fabric Operating System). So, without further ado, let’s update the firmware!
The first thing we want to do is get the latest FOS for our Brocade switch. Now I will show you a little trick, as it is very difficult to get the FOS version from the Brocade official website. Go ahead and Google DELL Brocade modelnum Drivers and then click on the first link from Dell.
You will see a link to another site called Brocaseassist.com, and clicking on it will redirect you to a wonderful page that lists all the current FOS firmware packages.
Voila! We can download all necessary firmware updates for our Brocade switches without any problem.
Brocade Switch Firmware Upgrade
Then unzip the download file and place it in the C: Brocade Firmware_version directory.
Now we will need to set up an FTP server on our workstation using the FileZilla FTP server. Once we have configured this, created a user and given him access to only the Brocade folder, we can continue to connect to the switch using SSH.
We chose our favorite SSH client, which is currently PuTTY. Enter the IP address of the switch, select SSH, click Open and enter the root credentials.
We will then use the firmwareshow command to find out which firmware version is currently installed on the switch.
Then we are going to initiate the firmwareownload command and enter all the required parameters.
Server Name or IP Address – This is the IP address of your workstation that hosts the FTP server.
Username is FTP user. The file name is the folder where the firmware is located, and for the network protocol, select FTP. Finally, enter the password for the user. The system will then perform a firmware check and, if everything is in order, start installing the update.
Please note that this is a major update and means the switch will reboot. Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoyed this article!