topic Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations in BladeSystem - General

HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

Ryan Bray — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:28:01 GMT

Greetings,

This is my first post in the HP forums as I recently started orking for a company that uses several HP bladecenter chassis.

My question is about hardware reporting via the iLO system. When I remove all the CPUs and DIMMs from a blade, the old configuration is still present in the Bladecenter Onboard Administrater UI. I would strongly prefer if it would show the current status (i.e. no CPU, no DIMMs). It seems that the status only gets updated if the slots and CPU sockets are populated, which isn't always the case in our setup.

Can someone please confirm this issue? And is there a firmware upgrade or soemthing that fixes?

I searched around the forum but couldn't find any other reports of this.

Thanks!
Ryan

Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

Torsten. — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:06:33 GMT

I don't think it makes any sense to install a blade without memory or CPU at all. I even don't think the blade will power up without this components. This is likely the reason why you don't see the current status.

I wonder what should be a reason to install such an "empty" blade?

Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

Ryan Bray — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:34:34 GMT

"I wonder what should be a reason to install such an "empty" blade?"

This is not in production, it is a test environment so a lot of resource shuffling goes on. Many of our blades only have a single processor and a couple sticks of RAM. Sometimes we need to swap two procs and extra RAM into one blade for a test, leaving other blades empty for a month or so. It makes sense to store the "empty" blades in the bladecenter since it is a prety secure location vs leaving them in a cube or something.

When it comes time to put the CPU/RAM back, it'd be nice to just look at the Onboard Administrator UI and see what we have in each bladecenter. Since the management chips run on 5v standby, we thought the bladecenter software would be able to detect a state of "no CPU and/or no DIMMs" and show it in the UI.

If that isn't possible its not a huge deal since we can always track things manually with stickers or something, but it wouold definitely be useful and save us some time.

Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

Torsten. — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:43:50 GMT

It makes sense from your point of view. But I think (I never faced with this question) the blades needs to go through POST in order to report the current status.

Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

gregersenj — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:56:47 GMT

Ryan you can't do that.

The x86 architecture har 2 musts.
1. The must be an operational CPU in the first socket.
Never heard of a computer that could run without a "CPU".
2. That first 8 kb of memory must be good.
The first (1 kb), is being used by the bIOS for interrupt vectors.
So the first 8 KB memory block is among the very first steps of the post. And is chekked before initializing the video.
If it fail, it stops > no video and boot.

The server will power on, but it will not be oprational. And it will not be able to forward information.
Server > ILo > OA.

BR
/jag

Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

David Claypool — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:07:30 GMT

Torsten is correct. Unless the system is able to POST, that information cannot be enumerated.

Re: HP Bl460c does not report correct CPU and DIMM populations

Ryan Bray — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:30:46 GMT

Thank you for the replies.

I was hoping the blade's iLO management board could detect that the system was unable to post due to no DIMMs or no CPUs. I figured it would be possible since since the iLO management board should run on 5V standby (i.e. it works even when the system is powered down or unable to post) and doesn't require anything from the blade's mainboard to talk to the c7000.

Please excuse my lack of terminology when it comes to HP's iLO implementation too. Since I'm not very familiar with the system yet, I'm not sure what the various management boards (the one in the blade, vs what is in the blade enclosure) are called.

Anyway, I guess this can be closed since the feature is not available. Again, thank you for the replies.

-Ryan