Hi bvjens31,              You have different options to update server BIOS without depending on Operating System installed on the server. I mentioned couple of them below 1: Locally Update Firmware using "Dell Lifecycle Controller 2"             In this method, you can reboot the server and boot in to "Life cycle Controller 2" by pressing "F10" during boot and perform the update. Refer "Firmware Update" section of "Life cycle Controller 2" user guide from link mentioned below for more details.            www.dell.com/.../dell-lifecycle-cntrler-2-rel-v1.1 2: Remotely Update Firmware using "iDRAC7"            In this method, you can update BIOS remotely using iDRAC7. To use this feature you need to update iDRAC7 firmware to 1.30.30 first. You can download iDRAC firmware from this link. You can use iDRAC Web Interface to update iDRAC firmware.                       Once you update iDRAC firmware to 1.30.30, you can update system BIOS using iDRAC7 "Update and Rollback" Feature. Refer "Updating Device Firmware" section under "Setting Up Managed System and Management Station" Chapter of iDRAC7 User Guide. You can download iDRAC7 User Guide from below link            www.dell.com/.../integrated-dell-remote-access-cntrllr-7-v1.30.30
So I'm setting up a new VMWare ESXi host for a client and before installing VMWare I was wanting to update the BIOS. Server currently has 1.3.6 installed but 1.4.6 is available on drivers page, so I figure hey might as well update the BIOS before anything's installed so it can't break anything down the road. I'm a bit new to this and all of my other clients who have Dell servers have Windows installed on the box so it's always been quite easy to update the BIOS--just download the Windows update package, run that, and reboot; simple. But this appears to be a bit trickier. I tried booting the server (which currently has no OS installed) to the Dell OMSA 7.1 centOS live CD, and from there I downloaded the BIOS file (the RedHat bin file version) and executed that file with root privs from command line "~sh T620_BIOS_filenamesomething.bin". It appeared to finish and asked me if I wanted to reboot. I chose Y, but when the server rebooted, I still see 1.3.6 in the BIOS. So I'm wondering if I performed a BIOS update in a non-supported way that appeared to work at first glance, but actually did not. I'm having a tough time finding Dell documentation on how to update a server BIOS when the server's NOT running Windows. Seems to me that this type of setup (VMware/Hyper-V installed on the hardware) is only going to be more and more popular going forward, so hoping to get a known-working (and supported) process for doing this. I'm also thinking that upgrading the other firmware on the server will involve a similar method of doing so, so really hoping to figure this out. Any pointers? Thanks much!
Updating PowerEdge T620 BIOS/firmware with no OS installed on hardware yet