Hi all,
I need to update a customer's Azure-hosted management and log servers from R81.10 to R81.20.
Following R81.20 documentation, I went the in-place upgrade path, as per sk177714.
(For some reason, the regular CPUSE upgrade packages do not show up on Azure VMs, and you need to use specific packages from this SK).
Everything looked fine but then Verify Update gave me a very confusing message:
Based on a system check, a firmware update may be necessary on one or more network cards to bring them up to date with the current Gaia network drivers. This update is a one-time process which could take several minutes, and is executed after Gaia OS upgrade is finished and has rebooted post-upgrade. After the firmware update is complete, the system will automatically reboot once more to apply the new firmware. Please do not reboot or shut the system down during this time.
The need for a firmware update on an Azure VM is rather unexpected.
However, I learned Azure VM do indeed run on hardware with Mellanox NICs, as do CP appliances, and part of the real NIC is actually exposed to the VM.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/accelerated-networking-how-it-works
Did you guys run into this?
Can we fearlessly go on with the upgrade in this situation?
I wouldn't want the upgrade process to fail trying to flash a new NIC firmware, and either just crash here or enter an endless reboot loop...
And before anyone asks, yes I'm also running this through TAC.
I'm just looking for insight from fellow admins with hands-on experience with this use case.
