Sorry for the bad news Dan, unfortunately it is required to reboot the host OS in order for the PERC firmware update to complete application and the driver to initialize communication with the new firmware. The RAID configurations and OS should not be affected by the firmware update but the reboot is required. Normally a PERC firmware update will not affect the RAID configuration at all. The entire controller configuration is stored in the controller's NVRAM and each physical disk's virtual disk configuration is additionally stored in the physical disk's DDF area, so if anything happens to the controller during flashing as long as the disks also did not crash you should be able to import the configuration from the disk set to the controller, but that is not a likely scenario unless something has already gone wrong that caused the controller to lose its config. Let me know if you need more info or assistance on this.
I have a number of R610 and R710's with PERC H700's in the R610's. After upgrading OpenManage in an attempt to update JRE with a security patch (not a worry for the servers use, but still needs to be done), OMSA is reporting an out of date PERC Driver.  Is there any way to update this driver without having to bring the server down, disrupting any raid configurations, or affecting the OS whatsoever? From what i can find, others have had to restart, on windows AND linux.  Currently running CentOS6, and our driver version is 12.10.1-0001.  Any Advice/Help would be appreciated.  Cheers Dan
PERC H700 Firmware Out Of Date On Production Server