Smart Array & iLO driver in vanilla kernel???

[Toan_Nguyen]

Hi guys,

I think you probably can help me with this question

We have huge German ISP running Linux on HP ProLiants and No-Name-Server (SuperMicro with Areca raid controller).

The Areca controller has got an open driver in the vanilla kernel. Now the customer would like to know wether if our SmartArray and iLO driver are also in the vanilla kernel???

Any help is appreciated.

Many thanks and best regards

Toan

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Toan,

Any particular kernel ...?

You will find the SmartArray driver cciss in most kernels.

Not sure about an iLO driver...

Cheers,

Rob

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

ilo is for all intents and purposes walled off from the OS. It is accessed even by web access in a way that simply pushed the traffic to the IP address of the iLo card. No special kernel drivers required. A good idea on the HP side to use the PSP 7.90.

A generic kernel will be able to access the smart array card without trouble. You may hae trouble with fiber channel access, but the PSP 7.90 installed onto a system with a working HBA card will provide access and see the disk through the cpqacu utility that ships in PSP 7.90.

SEP

[David Claypool]

As Rob said, the cciss driver linkages are present in most kernels and provided with most distributions. Be aware that down-rev versions of distributions may not have the most recent cciss driver necessary for some of the newer models.

The 'hprsm' package for iLO support from the host OS is closed source and does require a build linkage to the kernel. As Steven notes, iLO is a separate subsystem and is in a way 'walled off' from the host, but there are a number of things that the presence of hprsm provides, some with more value than others:

- lets the iLO know the host name of the server so it can display it in the iLO UI. This is useful because otherwise you would need to access the console to be absolutely sure you were on the iLO for the device you intended.
- allows for the System Management Homepage to display information about the iLO such as its IP address and status.
- allows Insight agent SNMP traffic to be forwarded on the iLO interface in addition to the host NIC
- allows iLO firmware to be updated from the host operating system using the Component Pack version of the firmware (alternatively you will have to access the iLO over the wire via the web interface or through scripting)
- allows iLO configuration to be managed from the HPONCFG utility in the host OS

These aren't critical features, and because of that, some folks choose not to load the hprsm package for iLO.