The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) and FWUPD on their great upward trajectory has in recent times been expanding beyond their initial focus of desktop/laptop hardware to supporting more server platforms for firmware updating. The latest feature driven by their growing server interests is “best known configuration” handling for where there are multiple independently-versioned firmware packages for a given system and may be support recommendations or potential version conflicts between the the different firmware packages.
While this may be useful for some laptops and desktops as well, the “best known configuration” support coming in the next FWUPD release is primarily engineered with servers in mind where there is a multitude of different firmware packages from UEFI to different controllers, network hardware, and a wide array of other upgradeable firmware/microcode. Often times the server vendors will have explicit version recommendations for all the different components due to commercial support reasons or what has been qualified by the vendor. With FWUPD’s “best known configuration” option, it’s now easy to convey those recommendations as a compatible set.
LVFS/FWUPD is becoming increasingly well supported on server-class hardware.
The best known configuration option works for both upgrading and downgrading of firmware. Users if desired can still bypass the “best known configuration” for a given system. FWUPD 1.7.3 due out before year’s end is expected to have this functionality in place.
More details on the feature via this blog post by FWUPD/LVFS lead developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat.
Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FWUPD-Best-Known-Servers