Global IP Address

[Ken Sutherland]

Dear experts,

We have a c7000 Enclosure with 8 blades (128 cores), two Blade Server Onboard Administrator boards, and two GbE2c switches. We are able to access the Onboard Administrator from any PC connected to the internet via a global IP address. But we can't figure out how to access the system with ssh so that we can execute programs remotely.

One idea we've had is to use an USB Ethernet adapter plugged into the front of one of the blades (e.g. Blade1A), via the local I/O cable. That should give us another NIC that we can assign (another) global IP to. Then we could access all the blades from there. Does this make sense? Or is there a way to access the blades via the onboard administrator?

I'm sorry, I'm totally new to all this blade stuff!

[Benoy Daniel]

All the blades can be accessed via ILO. You need to first assign IP to ILO's.

[juan quesada · Accepted solution]

hi,

the dungle cable (the one you have connected to the front of the blade) is normally not used.
Blade enclosure administration is performed via Onboard administrator and server blade administration is made via ILO which can be accessed directly from putty or Internet Explorer or via the ILO tab from the onboard administrator.
This ILO gives you full virtual presence to the server either GUI or CLI (internet explorer, firefox, telnet or SSH).

if the onboard administrator ethernet cable is connected to a switch with DHCP, all ILOs will have DHCP IP's, if OA has an static IP you have to set all ILO IPs manually.
On both, DHCP or static configurations, the settings can be set/check at the EBIPA (enclosure bay IP addresing) tab from the OA.

btw, if you access the server ILO from OA you dont need to autenticate, OA will autoautenticate agaist the server, if you access ILO directly you need to enter a default password which is a plastic tab you have to pull out from the front of the server

[Ken Sutherland]

Thank you for your help!

We will forget about the dungle cable and are now trying to access the blade server the proper way via OA. We can log into OA from any computer on the internet, and see all the power and network settings. But if we click on "Enclosure Information", "Device Bays", "1A", "iLO", "Web Administration", it opens a new Explorer window saying "The Onboard Administrator is contacting iLO. Please wait ... ", then after a few seconds it says that the page cannot be displayed.

It is trying to open:
https://192.168.1.101/login.htm
which is the static (local) address of blade 1A. I guess because this is not a global address, it's not working. Do all the blades have to be given global IPs? Or maybe if one of the blades (i.e. 1A) has a global IP, then the other blades can be accessed via local IP?

If we use the dungle cable on one of the blades, we can ssh to the other blades with the local addresses.

I'm attaching a PDF with our enclosure TCP/IP settings and Bay Summary. As you can see, the OA is connected with static IP, and the iLOs have local IP addresses.

Please let me know if I can supply any other information.

[Prokopets]

Ken, according the attached file your OA has this settings:

IP Address:* 133.87.101.90
Subnet Mask:* 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 133.87.101.1

as far as i know, your router (133.87.101.1) should "know" that your iLOs addresses are 192.168.1.xxx and should route this network (let's forget that 192.168.x.x is not routable to simplify the situation). I'm really not sure if you can do an "access point" through one address to all iLO addresses if they aren't accessible through router.

regards,
Philipp.

[Prokopets]

One more idea: latest onboard administrator firmware supports vlans and theoretically you can do something using them, but i'm not familiar with networks and not really sure that this can help :)

Regards,
Philipp.

[juan quesada]

A VPN is for me the best alternative. You VPN into any blade or workstation and from there use the IE to access all servers.

to your question, yes, all ILO have separete IPs so all of them will need global IPs.

[The Brit]

Ken,
It has been mentioned earlier, but you have not confirmed.

To set the ILO IP Addresses from the OA (this applies to OA Version 2.60 and earlier).

Under "Enclosure Settings" click on "Enclosure Bay IP Addressing". Select the "Device Bays" tab. You should not be looking at 1A etc. unless you are using double density blades.

1. Fill in the Shared Information, Mask, Gateway, Domain, DNS etc. Note: To avoid complications, select a subnet for your enclosure management subnet.
2. Under "EBIPA Address" enter the IP address for your server iLO's, check the boxes on the left for the appropriate blades/bays, and then click on "APPLY" at the bottom.

It normally takes a little while for the blades to acquire their IP's, (might take up to 20-30 minutes.)

In the past, it was a requirement that OA's, Interconnect Modules and Blade iLO's were all on the same subnet. Example:

OA1 xxx.yyy.zzz.101
OA2 xxx.yyy.zzz.102
IC 1 - 8 xxx.yyy.zzz.111 -> 118
iLOs (Bays) 1 - 16 xxx.yyy.zzz.1 -> 16

I use Static IP's personally, however DHCP is OK, if you prefer.

HTH

Dave

[The Brit]

Just to reply to your earlier comment.

The iLO and Web Administration links assume that the iLO IP addresses have been set (through EBIPA)

Dave.