I'm not really very sure why it is taking month to update firmware. I suggest you to open a SR in support.emc.com.  Regarding spare - VMAX AFA comes with more than 1 spare also, but it calculated depends upon how many drives you're getting. Dell EMC have some standard best practices where "1" spare drive for "n" number of drives. So once your drive count increases, spare also added accordingly. I can understand your concern, but it won't be an issue. Hope this helps!!  VMAX AFA engine term has been replaced with vBricks  [IMAGE]
We bought a VMAX 450F a few months, still not in production yet.  There is a known issue with the SSDs causing them to fail.   I get emails about updating drive firmware, but I couldn't do it yet because I had to update the code on the box first.  Once I got the code updated on the box, we then try to get this scheduled but it is going to take a month just to update the drive firmware.  Why does anything with the remote change control takes a month or longer to do?   The other thing that really bothered us is we have a single engine with about 25 drives (3.84 TB SSDs), is that there is only 1 spare drive in there.   We have major concerns when we lost a drive a few weeks ago, leaving us with 0 drives.  It took us 3 days to get another drive in and replaced.  When our VMAX phoned home,  they didn't automatically ship a new drive.  It got stuck in somebody's queue, I had to call to get the drive shipped.  Then had to wait for a CE to change out the drive. I would like it to be where we can replace drives.  Do VMAX3s all flash array normally come with only 1 spare drive? or at what point to they ship with 2?   . 
VMAX 450F disappointments