Dl20g9 iLO goes to 100FDX when server is off

[TobiasKlausmann]

When DL20g9 is powered off, the iLO drops the links speed to 100FDX, probably to do power saving.

Unfortunately, in one of our DCs, the switching infrastructure only supports GE and up.

Is there a way to tell the iLO to not drop the link speed?

(I am aware that we could splice in some dumb switch, but I'd rather not do so, even if I can get our networking and DC people to agree).

[waaronb]

Unfortunately I think that's just how the newer ILO 4 works.

On the ILO 4 you could try forcing it to "1000BaseT, Full Duplex" instead of "Automatic" (the default) and maybe it will stick to that even when the server is powered off.

Otherwise I would try to convice your datacenter that 100Mb is perfectly acceptable for IPMI (and older ILO only supports that anyway) so hopefully they would accommodate servers/customers with systems a few years older.  Gigabit ILO didn't show up until ILO4 so really... how do they handle G7 and earlier Proliants, or servers from other vendors that typically only have 100Mb IPMI ports? They seem to be a little too strict on that.

Maybe they simply prefer to lock the port to a certain speed (whatever it is) and they'd be happy to lock it to 100Mb and you could configure ILO 4 to use that instead of auto?

It just seems a little draconian to diasble auto-negotiate except in certain cases where it might cause problems.

[TobiasKlausmann]

Our current workaround (splicing in a switch) works for now.

I've looked at the TOR switch config with out networking people, and it looks like they do not support 100FDX at all on a hardware/firmware level, so that config option is not something we can do without replacing the TOR switch.

I'll try the "force GE" option in a minute and will report back --- thanks for this suggestion!

[TobiasKlausmann]

Further data:

We can't set link speed in the iLO config since this is a shared port.

Setting the OS-level link negotion to off and force it to GE/FDX can be done, but after a shutdown, the iLO still logs:

1035   06/08/2017 09:13 06/08/2017 09:13 1 iLO network link up at 100 Mbps.
1034   06/08/2017 09:13 06/08/2017 09:13 1 Server power removed.
1033   06/08/2017 09:13 06/08/2017 09:13 1 Server reset.

 I haven't checked yet if the switch currently spliced in has dropped the port to 100FDX or is still at GE despite iLO's claims, but I have little hope. Will add an update after I've made a hike to the DC in an hour or two.

Further suggestions welcome.

[TobiasKlausmann]

No such luck: even hard-setting the link to GE/FDX in the OS will not stop iLO from dropping to 100FDX on server poweroff.

I also rummaged around in the power settings of iLO, but even setting the server power policy to "high power" did not prevent iLO from going 100FDX.

[Jimmy Vance]

Guess I've never noticed this before, but just verfied on a DL20 I have. I've reached out to the iLO team.  What TOR switch are you using?  

[TobiasKlausmann]

I am not sure about the exact model of the switch but it's a Cisco switch with 10G/1G ports.