ML350 G4 w/ RILOE II - Virtual Power

[Cory Hug]

We have ProLiant ML350 G4 servers with an RILOE II board in them. The server has the latest 12/2/04 ROM update and the RILOE II board has the latest 1.15 ROM. Because these servers are located in an office environment (no lectures please, the physical location is a whole different discussion) we wanted to disable the software power button so somebody in the office doesn't accidentally push the power button and shut the server down. In the ROM Based Setup of the server under Server Availability, we set the "Power Button" option to "Disabled". The Help text on that option says it does not affect the remote power control capability. But with the Power Button option set to Disabled, none of the 3 Virtual Power functions on the RILOE II board work at all. Only if we set the "Power Button" option to Enabled in the RBSU of the server will the Virtual Power functions of the RILOE II board work. So, is the help text in the RBSU wrong, or should the RILOE II Virtual Power work with the "Power Button" set to Disabled in the server's RBSU? And if it should, why isn't it? Thank you!

[acartes]

It looks like the ROM help text is wrong.

Disabling the power button option prevents the host from responding to any momentary power button presses while the host is on. Physical of virtual power button presses are both affected.

However, the "Press and hold (force power off)" functionality (~4 second override) continues to work for both physical and virtual modes.

[Cory Hug]

Thanks for the response. I had gone ahead and opened a ticket with HP support via e-mail. They had me check a couple things but then came back yesterday and said that the Power Button option has to be enabled. I recommended they change the help text on the Power Button option in a future BIOS revision of the server.

On a side note, in my case, the "Force Power Off" function didn't work either with the Power Button option disabled. There are three different Virtual Power options in the RILOEII and NONE of them worked.