Offline Dell PowerEdge Firmware Updates Using the LifeCycle Controller

Dell's FTP servers they host firmware updates on aren't the best - especially when being accessed from the Dell USC Lifecycle Controller. Usually things work fine, but every now and again things go south and you end up seeing a screen like this:

"A network error occurred while trying to connect to the FTP server. Check your network connections, cables, settings, and configuration..."

...or sometimes like this:

"The update packages that you selected to install failed during download or installation. Retry the operation or provide an alternate repository."

Both results can make your day sour fast if you scheduled downtime or are working in a maintenance window. The second error above gives the suggestion to "...provide an alternate repository" and the menu used when launching the the Platform Update has the options of using a Local Drive. I never gave this much thought until I needed to do some updates outside of the OS and couldn't connect to Dell's FTP server. Enter Dell Repository Manager.

I'm not going to walk through the steps since they are well documented on Dell's site, but this should be all you need (for : Lifecycle Controller with Dell Repository Manager

This document outlines how to create a local USB or ISO repository that you can then use to perform these updates offline. You could even have it output to a directory on an FTP server accessible by all your servers.

I always assumed that tools like these weren't that useful unless I was managing hundreds of servers, but it turns out they're great even if you need to update just one.