BladeSystem power up sequence & time delays

[chuckk281]

Question from Duane:

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From what I’ve read in other threads, after a power failure, the sequence for power up is:

                OAs -                    first  (kinda important),   how long it takes – unknown – just need a real ballpark

                Interconnects -     next (order unknown),   how long it takes – unknown – just need a real ballpark

                P4500’s                need above timings to know how long to wait

                Blades -                based on the startup delay specified in VCM

Need to know the rough timing of the first two, assuming redundant OAs and a pair of VC-FF and 6120XGs.

Anyone have some equipment to measure these timings?   Doesn’t have to be exact,  but need to know  for delay to power up P4500’s.   iSCSI has to be ready before the BL460 blades power up.   It would be REALLY nice to have a methodical mgmt interface which could govern the timing of all these activities…..  

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Reply from Monty:

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The answer depends on not only the specific hardware (we have two different versions of OA hardware, multiple generations of blades with different iLO hardware, many different interconnects) and the specific versions of firmware for the management processors in each of the above.

Roughly the OA finishes power on self tests in less than a minute – but the discovery and initialization of all the device and interconnect bays can take several minutes – but usually under five minutes.

Interconnects are typically powered on by the OA first and can take several minutes to complete their power on tests and become operational.

Server blades are more difficult to estimate as amount of memory to test, number and type of mezz adapters all factor into the time to complete POST – with a wide variation in that time from a minute to five minutes.

If the entire enclosure is powering up for the first time or blades are inserted into the enclosure – you have to add the time for iLO to initialize which is less than a minute.

As the OA user guide suggests – in order to use the OA power delay feature to ensure that the interconnects have completed initialization prior to the servers, the customer should profile their specific configuration and not guess how long it might take.

I’m not aware of any competitor that has a feature like this.

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Comments?

[chuckk281]

Another Power-up question from Duane:

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Is there a way to look at logs or status indicators and see exactly how long each component is taking to boot and be in “ready” status?   Customer is trying to use a stopwatch to figure out their exact profile, but unsure how to know when the OAs and interconnects are done booting.

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Reply from Monty:

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The active OA syslog will have a message for each blade powered on by the OA based on the power delay feature.

The OA syslog message “Blade x is properly cooled” is written when each of the server blades complete POST.

There is no signal from an interconnect to the OA indicating the interconnect is ready for service – if the interconnect supports a serial or GUI console then typically those consoles are not available until the interconnect finishes its power on tests.

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