A system administrator has upgraded the firmware of the DPU.

The correct answer is that the firmware is waiting on reboot to become active. For NVIDIA networking devices and DPUs, a firmware upgrade generally writes the new firmware image to the device flash, but the currently running firmware may remain active until the device is reset, rebooted, or power-cycled. NVIDIA MFT documentation notes that loading new firmware may require mlxfwreset, reboot, or power cycle, depending on the device and situation. This distinction is important during server bring-up because administrators must verify both the flashed firmware version and the running firmware version before declaring the update complete. Assuming the firmware is immediately active can lead to version drift across nodes, inconsistent behavior, or failed validation. The firmware is not deleted, and saying it is merely copied but not installed is incomplete because the update process has written it to the device. The operational issue is activation. In production clusters, firmware upgrades should be followed by the required reset procedure and post-update validation using appropriate NVIDIA tools before returning the node to service.