1. Remote Deployment Manager: RDM is IBM’s deployment tool for operating systems and infrastructure applications. This, in conjunction with IBM Director, helps IBM customers to deploy not only entire operating systems but to also ‘prepare’ hardware with RAID configs, latest BIOS and firmware and so on, prior to the OS deployment. With RDM’s tasks, you can update the System BIOS, BMC firmware, FCAL adapters and RSA cards. RDM is a licensed product.

2. Altiris DS: IBM’s ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit (SGST – free to download tool), integrates with Altiris and allows HP RDP and Altiris DS customers to prepare and deploy IBM-based packages, such as BIOS/firmware, as well as entire operating systems and ServeRAID adapter configurations to servers and blades.

3. Any PXE booting software that allows a boot-up environment on a remote system (using DOS or WinPE) can use the IBM BIOS/firmware updates available on the IBM Web site, to update hardware components on servers/blades. There are plenty of tools that do this and as long as they create a deployment environment, you can insert the DOS version of the update package and run it as a command line.

4. If you have an OS installed on your servers/blades, then the best way by far to update and maintain their hardware components is via IBM Director. This, with the aid of its Director Agent, will allow you to update your systems regularly, using IBM Director’s Update Manager and Software Distribution (Standard Edition is all you need) tasks.

Hope this helps.