Similar to ILO options in HP 9000 and HP IPF family servers

[Senthil Kumar .A_1]

Hi Admins/HP tech heads,

Yesterday I was installing linux on one of the HP blades with the help of Integrated Lights Out(ILO) remotely. Though we have same kind of features available for HPUX family of servers namely MP/GSP prompt. There was one feature of ILO that fascinated me the most, and would have wanted it very much in MP/GSP prompt.

There was a feature called "Virtual device" that would let us connect a boot image file as a "floppy" or "cdrom" and make the server boot through that image. That was indeed a cool feature for remote installation facility. Now why do I really need this feature in HPUX environment... I'm not too sure how you guys counter attack the following situation..

Lets say I have HPUX box, and it has crashed and assuming I have run out of booting through mirror for the fact that, say a patching has corrupted the mirror copy alike, now I need to revert to Ignite restoration. Now if the system was up, I could aswell initiate a restore sitting on Ignite server, that would transfer a "WINSTALL" image to the target system and let us restore it. Since in my case the system is down, with unfortunate event that I do not have my ignite server in the same lan as that of target server nor a ignite helper is available, I need to ask my datacenter operator to put the installation media on the cdrom drive. I was thinking in the line that if we could have the so called "virtual device" option in MP/GSP I could have avoided the manual intervention of my DC personnel. Or atleast if there were a default "WINTALL" image available in GSP/MP that would let me boot the system to bare minimum level that would let me choose, an IP addr, netmask, gateway and Ignite server IP for one of my LAN card would have sufficed. I was think how much would this bare minimum WINSTALL code would cost to be integrated with GSP/MP.

Having said all the above, :) I do not know wether this a right palce to put this tread. May be the thought is not practical at all in the first place. But, I could not ignore its utility in our admin tasks. Nevertheless I sum up my courage to put it here to hear some thoughts from experts. May be I'm beating a wrong bush. If not an answer to my query, atleast an indication of a future solution by HP in the direction would fetch you some points :).

SK

[Torsten.]

Hi,

the iLO functionality (virtual device) is available for new Integrity servers too.

[Bill Hassell]

The GSP/MP is a very small computer designed only to be used for hardware support. There simply is no storage for such a large image. For a Lights-Out operation, you need remote access to the GSP/MP LAN and an Ignite helper machine. You can easily pickup a D-class or rp2400 series for much less than the cost of an operator. Setup both machines as boot helpers and you'll be able to recover either machines remotely.

[Torsten.]

See the specs of the new Integrities, for example the rx3600:

"...
Support for Integrated Lights Out version 2 (iLO v2) Advanced Pack activation key and license (AD301A). Firmware license installs on the integrated Management Processor Card. Integrated Lights Out (iLO) Advanced Pack provides additional remote management capabilities, including integrated remote console and virtual CD/DVD drive, and LDAP directory services, SSH security, and Group Actions with HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM)"

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12595_div/12595_div.HTML

[Alzhy]

Senthil,

Greetings of Peace and Clean Air!

For an unmanned/rearely-manned DataCenter Operations - we always ensure we've boothelpers on each LAN segment in addition to bootable tape and/or CD/DVD Media to ensure the HP-UX/UNIX/Linux machine in need will be able to access it's Ignite, Jumpstart or KickStart server.

But I totally agree - the ILO virtual device where you can stash bootable images will be a very nice feature to have on older GSP/MP based 9000 machines...

[rick jones]

As already noted, the new zx2-based Integrity servers (*) have an iLO with optional virtual media support. I've used it a couple times with positive results.

Additionally, the zx2, sx1000, sx2000 and some of the "newer" zx1-based systems (with current firmware) have support for "dbprofile" in the EFI. While this isn't iLO VM, it can be used in conjunction with lanboot to boot/install a system via the network from a remote site without DHCP/TFTP/other support. I have used this functionality to install Linux kernels on a system in one part of the country where the server with the bits was in another part of the Country (US, between Cupertino, Ft Collins and Roseville)

It is entirely possible that this dbprofile EFI option will provide what you are looking for. While I've not used it with Ignite, I would think there are ways to do so, so would suggest checking the latest Ignite/UX documentation, which I would presume is available on docs.hp.com