Patent attributes
A storage system includes a storage server and a storage subsystem having an I/O module coupled to disks. The storage subsystem receives new firmware from the storage server for an I/O module in the storage subsystem. The storage subsystem stores state data for the I/O module. The storage subsystem reboots a CPU for the I/O module to load the new firmware and determines after reboot that the reboot was for loading the new firmware based on the stored state data. The storage subsystem initializes the I/O module to use the new firmware. The initialization of the I/O module is based on the stored state data, does not reset I/O routing hardware on the I/O module, and is independent of the I/O module processing a request to access data stored on disks coupled to the I/O module.