c7000 Blade Enclosure Power down / Up

[JL123]

Hi all,

This weekend our data centre is having a complete power down and power up to test our generators and UPS, so we will have to power down all our servers and enclosures etc.

Just wondering if there's any standard procedure or order for firstly gracefully shutting down the enclosures, and then bringing them and all the switches/OA/brocades back up?

Thanks.

[Cederberg]

first of all you need to obviously shutdown your servers.

Then you can go into OA and shutdown the switches.

then there is not much you can do but to yank out the power cords.

Reverse the process when taking the chassi online again...

[WFHC-WI]

Hi JL,

You can also configure the servers and interconnect modules to power themselves back on after a power outage (with or without delay).

Depending on your OA firmware, you may have a link "Device Power Settings." The OAs power on automatically when power is attached. If you want to delay their poweron, you have to unseat them while connecting cables. I recommend:
>power on active OA
>power on standby OA
>after 60 seconds power on interconnects 1,3,5,7
>after 60 more seconds power on interconnects 2,4,6,8
>after 60 more seconds begin powering on blade servers (order doesn't matter but to reduce power draw do them sequentially)

Good luck!

[JL123]

Okay thanks for the replies.

So obviously there's no graceful way to shutdown, except to shut down the servers first and then yank out the power cables?

[WFHC-WI · Accepted solution]

For shutdowns you can use the POWEROFF command from a telnet or ssh session to the active OA.

syntax
POWEROFF { SERVER | INTERCONNECT }{ ALL | [{ , | - } ]}

So gracefully from the OS shut down blades, then from OA use GUI power options for interconnects or
POWEROFF INTERCONNECT ALL
from SSH/telnet.
Remove standby OA, then active OA manually. Once these are removed there is no intelligence in the enclosure it isn't much different than having a box fan or surge protector plugged in... you can kill power at will without fear of damaging equipment.

Good luck!

[JL123]

Thanks for the suggestions all.

Pretty much we shutdown all the servers and then brocade/cisco switches and powered down the entire rack instead of pulling cables out. Everything came online as suggested and the Delayed power sequence was very handy, no faulty devices reported.