c7000 Configuration questions / ILO connection problems

[Ernst_H]

Dear all,

beeing new to the HP c7000 system, I am struggeling with some of the configurations, thus leading to problems with the communication to the ILOs of (Proliant) blades.

Please be patient, as some of the questions may have been asked 100 times before, however I did some INET research and was not able to find appropriate answers...And yes, the text is long, but I tried to be as precise as possible.

The environment is as follows:

I have two c7000 enclosures, their OA are connected via a HP Procurve 2848 to the network of the institute. Both the switch and the OAs have static IPs, pattern is 128.131.x.x, I am able to connect to the OAs via the WEB interface as well as via ssh connection.

What I'd like to have:

The inserted blades should have IPs assigned which are not from the 128.131.x.x range, so that I don't have to claim adresses from the admin (neither static nor DHCP assignment). However, I want to be able to connect to the ILOs of the blades to monitor them and to run firmware updates. There is no need to connect to the ILOs direct from the 128.131.x.x network (in fact, I don't want to enable this), all maintenance should be done from the OAs WEB interface.

I think this is no special operation mode but more a standard one...

As far as I understood the most convinient solution for my problem should be this:

Under "Enclosure Bay IP Addressing", IP4 I enabled "EBIPA" and assigned the first bay "192.168.1.10/255.255.255.0". After auto filling the bays got a (correct?) IP assigned. I set the ILOs of the blades to default values and enabled DHCP. As far I can see, all blades are set to the IP adress they should have in the bay they are inserted to, see photo. I can click on the blades and the info is displayed correctly (CPUs, temperatures, etc, see photo).

However, if I move to the "ILO" section, and try to connect to the blades ILO, no connection is possible (tried with various OS / Browsers), e.g. if I try to use the WEB interface, a new tab opens but "nothing" happens, beside a timeout after a while...(popup windows are enabled btw).

So here are my questions:

1) as you might have seen, I have left the fields "gateway", "domain" and "DNS" empty, simply as I don't know which values to put (of course I tried 192.168.1.1 for the gateway, but this changed nothing). Have these fields to be filled, and, if yes, which are the correct values? As far as I understood, the network used here is "closed" within the enclosure and no connection to the outer world (in my case 128.131.x.x) exists, so there are no gateway and no DNS defined???

2) There is a DHCP service running on the 128.131.x.x network, and I read somewhere (however I can't remember where ) that EBIPA should not be used in this case. Is this a "must not be used", meaning it will not work??? If this is the case, can I block UDP 67/68 on the port of the switch where the OAs are connected? If yes, has someone a tip how to do this on a ProCurve 2848?

3) I also read (https://community.hpe.com/t5/BladeSystem-Virtual-Connect/How-to-access-ILO-without-giving-Gateway-in-EBIPA-settings-in-OA/td-p/20),  that using the private network "192.168.x.x" will prevent the graphical logins from working. Is this true? Of course I tried another network (193.168.x.x, also failed...)

I'm sure I missed something or misundestood some guide. However, I'm stuck and I have no idea what I am doing wrong, so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Ernst

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. HPE BladeSystem c7000 Enclosures - OA KVM Cannot Access Integrated Lights-Out 2 (iLO 2) Using Default Port 23 [Moderator edit: Removed the broken link. Please refer to https://support.hpe.com/]

2. Advisory: (Revision) HP Integrated Lights-Out 2 (iLO 2) Does Not Receive Valid IP Address from Onboard Administrator if HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure Version 1.00 or 1.01 Uses Enclosure Bay IP Addressing (EBIPA) with No External Network Connected

Please click on "Thumbs Up/Kudo" icon to give a "Kudo".

Thank you for being a HPE valuable community member.

[Torsten.]

Try to set a route on your PC like this:

route add <iLO_IP_address> mask 255.255.255.255 <OA_IP_address>

[Ernst_H]

@Torsten. 

Hi Torsten,

thanks for your time to answer me. However, I am not really happy with this, as it i) changes the routing tables of my machines and ii) would require to add all ILO IPs to the routing table ON ALL PCs from which I would like to access the ILOs via the OA. I think this is not the way this should work. Logging in to the OA Web interface should be enough - or am I wrong here? I will try your suggestion as a "last resort" solution, tough.

However, I tried some other things meanwhile:

1) I connected the OA to a CentOS Box having no DHCP server running on 128.131.x.x - nope.

For the followings tests I used the "no DHCP" configuration

2) I changed the EBIPA adress to 193.168.1.10 - nope

3) I changend the ILO configuration on the blade from DHCP to manually an set it to both 192.168.1.10 and 193.168.1.10 and turned off the EBIPA for that slot. The blade shows the manually set IP, but guess what: no connection to the ILO via the OA...

4) I updated the blades firmware manually by booting an USB SSP image, version 2017.04., this is imho the latest one supporting G6 machines. Went well, ILO is now on version "v2.29, Jul 16 2015". But of course, this did not solve the problem...

So, to make progress here, I would REALLY APPECIATE ANY HELP & IDEAS what I am doing wrong...

ANYONE???

In fact, I think I'm going nuts soon...

!!!!!Please can anyone explain me if it is mandatory to fill the field "gateway" (and/or others) in the EBIPA configuration page and if yes what values do I have to put there...!!!!

Meanwhile I will try to update the ILO2 firmware to the very latest version, which I think is "v2.33 30 Mar 2018".

Waiting (hoping) for your helpful answers,

Best

Ernst