I have some Sun Fire X4150 servers with a very old BIOS release (1ADQW015), which seems to have some compatibility problems with WMware ESX Server 3.5 and Windows 2008 R2 virtual machines; so I want to update the BIOS on them.

The problem: according to this page, if your servers run ELOM (mine do), you first need to update to the latest ELOM release, then to the interim transition release, then finally you can update to the latest one.

Ok, I'm willing to do that... but it looks like Sun (now Oracle) will happily let you download the latest firmware DVD (3.3.0), but it will not let you download the transition release (2.0) if you don't have a support contract.

Well, I actuall don't care at all about the servers' management controllers (we don't even use them), so upgrading from ELOM to ILOM is totally irrelevant to me; but I need to update the servers' BIOS. So my question is: can I update the servers' BIOS to the latest version without doing the full ELOM-to-ILOM migration, or will this not work (or even make the servers unusable)? Do BIOS versions and SP ones need to be matched, or can one be updated without bothering with the other?

Bonus question: if this whole ELOM-to-ILOM thing actually is needed in order to update the BIOS, can that 2.0 CD-ROM be obtained without having a support contract with Sun/Oracle (which we are definitely not going to sign, being that quite old hardware)?

Update:

I tried upgrading only the BIOS on one of the servers, and it didn't boot anymore. So it really looks like a full firmware upgrade is needed, and the management controller and BIOS versions should be kept in sync.

So... where can I find that *&!£%$% 2.0 CD-ROM? Or at least the transition firmware that can be found on it?