Firmware catalog for Dell's vSAN Ready Nodes
Summary: This is a firmware catalog which contains validated and certified firmware stack for selected Dell VMware vSAN Ready Nodes.
Instructions
- This vSAN firmware catalog is meant to be used only for specific server models. See "Server Models supported" section for specifics.
- This catalog is unsupported for VMware ESXi use cases or any other vSAN Ready Nodes that Dell offer.
- For VMware ESXi use cases other than vSAN, see knowledge base article 126599, Firmware catalog for Dell customized VMware ESXi images. Seek additional guidance from your aligned Dell account team if you need further details.
- Dell releases new and refreshed catalogs for VMware vSAN on a quarterly basis. Up to N-1 of the Dell customized VMware ESXi ISO image has refreshed vSAN catalogs on selected server models.
What is a vSAN firmware catalog?
A firmware catalog is an aggregation of all firmware bundles that are supported on multiple generations of Dell servers. A vSAN firmware catalog is designed to support Dell’s vSAN Ready Nodes based on PowerEdge R740xd, R740, R640, R840, R750, R650, R7515, R6515, MX750c, R660, R760, R6616, R7615, R7625 and MX760c servers.
Server Models supported.
Server Models supported for vSAN firmware catalog.
| Supported Server Models | |
| Dell vSAN Ready Nodes | PowerEdge vSAN Ready Nodes |
| vSAN Ready Node R640 | PowerEdge R640 |
| vSAN Ready Node R740 | PowerEdge R740 |
| vSAN Ready Node R740xd | PowerEdge R740xd |
| vSAN Ready Node R840 | PowerEdge R840 |
| vSAN Ready Node R650 | PowerEdge R650 |
| vSAN Ready Node R750 | PowerEdge R750 |
| vSAN Ready Node R6515 | PowerEdge R6515 |
| vSAN Ready Node R7515 | PowerEdge R7515 |
| vSAN Ready Node MX750c | PowerEdge MX750c |
| vSAN Ready Node R660 | PowerEdge R660 |
| vSAN Ready Node R760 | PowerEdge R760 |
| vSAN Ready Node R6615 | PowerEdge R6615 |
| vSAN Ready Node R7615 | PowerEdge R7615 |
| vSAN Ready Node R7625 | PowerEdge R7625 |
| vSAN Ready Node MX760c | PowerEdge MX760c |
Firmware catalogs for Dell’s VMware vSAN Ready Nodes
The intent of this vSAN firmware catalog is to provide supported and certified firmware versions for selected vSAN Ready Nodes. The firmware catalog, when used along with Dell’s customized VMware ESXi ISO images, provides a "wanted state" for customers. The vSAN firmware catalog has the specific firmware versions for all supported vSAN components when used with the corresponding Dell customized ESXi image. Together these two products provide a path to the wanted vSAN cluster state.
See VMware vSphere Life-Cycle Manager (vLCM) and Dell integration whitepaper section "Configuring vSphere Wanted State for Dell PowerEdge VMware cluster using vLCM" to setup a wanted state. Though the example mentions the ESXi catalog, you may replace that with the vSAN catalog to create a vSAN wanted state. When you use the firmware catalog and the corresponding Dell customized ESXi ISO image, you achieve a wanted state from the driver firmware compatibility point of view.
Below is a table which maps the recommended firmware catalog for Dell's VMware vSAN Ready nodes along with the corresponding customized ESXi images which contain the supported and certified HBA and NVMe drivers. This is a living document and gets modified as and when new catalogs are released. The Dell customized VMware ESXi images can be downloaded from VMware download page 
See Dell support pages for 8.x, 7.x and 6.x for various documentations around Dell VMware ESXi versions.
Starting May 2024, we've divided the payload content to multiple KBs based on the ESXi branch. This page is going to be static and the below KBs will have the firmware payloads for individual ESXi based vSAN branches moving forward.
- For the vSAN catalog payloads supporting ESXi 6.x branch, refer here .
- For the vSAN catalog payloads supporting ESXi 7.x branch, refer here .
- For the vSAN catalog payloads supporting ESXi 8.x branch, refer here .