LSI driver for mptsas installs without errors but compliance is not satisfied

This problem affects users of update manager on Windows.

Problem

A false negative compliance issue is created for the LSI driver with update ID ibm_dd_mptsas_1.31.02.00_windows_32-64 and its holding collection, for example the UpdateXpress System Package (UXSP) with update ID ibm_utl_uxsp_d6sp02a-1.59_windows_32-64. Even after installing the holding collection, compliance still shows the LSI driver as needed.

Explanation

The ibm_dd_mptsas_1.31.02.00_windows_32-64 LSI driver is required for certain target managed servers, so its installation is required in those cases. However, when the driver is installed with update manager, the installation completes successfully but does not satisfy the compliance. The inventory might still show only the previous version of the driver.

The root cause of this error is that the hardware itself is potentially not be present, yet the driver is installed and running before the update. The driver is a critical driver since the corresponding hardware is part of the Windows boot start process. Therefore, a version of the driver is running as part of the Windows Plug and Play infrastructure. The update driver is unable to find the corresponding hardware and therefore will not update the driver. However, the update task will return a success code because it checked that the hardware is not present and therefore did not find a need to update the driver.

Resolution

If the necessary hardware is not present, complete the following steps to alter the registry key for the LSI driver so that Windows does not start it during start up.

Locate the registry item HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lsi_sas.
Modify the value of Start to 4.
Restart the target managed system and ensure that the LSI driver is not running.
Use IBM® Flex System Manager to run inventory on the target managed system and ensure that the compliance issue clears.

Tip: If you write a script to apply this workaround to multiple systems, you can use the cfggen.exe binary that comes with the installed LSI driver to check whether the target managed system contains the required hardware.