Accessing the Update Access Key Expiration Date from AIX

As part of the introduction of POWER8 systems, IBM has also introduced the “Update Access Key”, which is necessary to perform firmware updates of the managed system. By default, newly delivered systems have an update access key that usually expires after 3 years. Thereafter, the Update Access Key can has to be extended every 6 month, but only if a maintenance contract exists(https://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess/index.wss).

Of course, it is easy to find out when the current Update Access Key runs through the HMC, GUI or CLI. But you can also display the expiration date via the lscfg command from AIX:

In the case of AIX 7.1, this looks like this:

$ lscfg -vpl sysplanar0 | grep -p "System Firmware"
      System Firmware:
...
        Microcode Image.............SV860_138 SV860_103 SV860_138
        Microcode Level.............FW860.42 FW860.30 FW860.42
        Microcode Build Date........20180101 20170628 20180101
        Microcode Entitlement Date..20190825
        Hardware Location Code......U8284.22A.XXXXXXX-Y1
      Physical Location: U8284.22A.XXXXXXX-Y1

In the case of AIX 7.2, the output is slightly different:

$ lscfg -vpl sysplanar0 |grep -p "System Firmware"
      System Firmware:
...
        Microcode Image.............SV860_138 SV860_103 SV860_138
        Microcode Level.............FW860.42 FW860.30 FW860.42
        Microcode Build Date........20180101 20170628 20180101
        Update Access Key Exp Date..20190825
        Hardware Location Code......U8284.22A.XXXXXXX-Y1
      Physical Location: U8284.22A.XXXXXXX-Y1

Relevant are the lines “Microcode Entitlement Date” respectively “Update Access Key Exp Date“.