response to ILO question

[laurie robinson]

Recently I rec'd the following question:

We plan an project and have to shutdown around 100 blade server by scrip via LAN.
Is there an posibility to use the virtual button of the iLO to initiate an save system blade shutdown executet from an script on an other computer.

thank you for your information and tools if this should be possible with HP Blades.

I am posting the following reply for Andrew Cartes who is out this week:

You can automate this process using the online scripting utility CPQLOCFG which uses RIBCL (XML-style) scripts to send commands to iLO. The utility and documentation is available for download from
http://www.hp.com/servers/lights-out
Follow iLO Standard or iLO Advanced then Software and drivers. Select appropriately and get the "HP Lights-Out Online Configuration Utility" You might also want to grab the XML scripting examples because they show some other cool things you can automate with lights-out, like firmware updates and administration.

The full documentation is in the iLO user guide, also available on the site under "Support and Documents" then "Manuals".

To use this script, I recommend verifying the desired behavior on a single blade. Log into iLO and open Remote Console so you can watch what happens at the server.

This script simulates a momentary button press. Usually the OS will take this as a signal to gracefully shut down, but this depends on the OS configuration so it is good to verify.

By the way, there are other commands available, to force a power-off, power-on, reset, etc.

Using the CPQLOCFG utility (in this case, I'll assume a Windows client), save the following script to a file, for example, "power_press.xml"











Then execute the script against the blade you are monitoring. Something like:

C:\iLOXML>cpqlocfg -s 192.168.1.1 -f power_press.xml

Verify the results, then let the fun begin!

[Junior Yharte]

A quick note, if youâ re using W2003, and the console is not logged in, it will not let you do a virtual power button press. Use the "Hold_pwr_btn" in place of "Press_pwr_btn" to get it to power off. Note that this is not going to initiate a graceful shutdown so please take the necessary precautions of saving open files fir