While I was trying to update a 12th Generation Dell Server with the Life Cycle Controller, it would download all the Firmware updates from Dell and then the Life Cycle Controller would freeze after this. I didn’t think much of it at first and manually updated the Firmware of other components by getting the files from the Dell Support Website. But when I tried updating the Bios Firmware, it would run the setup normally but when the server rebooted, the old firmware was still on there.
I decided to take a look on the Life Cycle controller and look at the logs. What I found in the logs when the Life Cycle Controller was trying to update the Bios was the following(Might be different for other folks)
cpu exception type 0x0d general protection
That error means that there is a problem with the CPU/Motherboard. You will have to run the DSET tools from Dell and contact Dell Support. Dell will then have to replace the motherboard for that server. There is nothing much you can do about that! 🙁
UPDATE (06/29/2014)
I recently ran into another cause for not being able to update the BIOS and one of the causes can be due to the Life Cycle Controller Firmware being too old. Update the Life Cycle Controller first and then try the BIOS update again. I found this to work with the Dell PowerEdge R710 Server.