HPE 1Gb Ethernet PassThru Module wont' take EBIPA IP address.

[TheUbMunster]

I have a HPE 1Gb Ethernet PassThru Module (P/N 406740-B21), and for some reason it won't take the IP address I assigned via EBIPA in the OA webpage (it's in slot #1 btw), it just says the ip address is 0.0.0.0. Throughout this process, I factory reset the virtual connect manager (just in case) via putting it in a different interconnect bay (read this in a forum post I can't find anymore). I also saw vague stuff saying that EBIPA only takes if you power cycle the interconnect module (which I've done several times). I'm simply trying to turn on Virtual Connect Manager and access it. The first two minutes of this youtube video makes it look easy, but for him the IP address took, and for me it simply doesn't.

The features under Information/Connectivity indicate that "Internal Ethernet Route to OA" is enabled, "Internal Serial Route to OA" is enabled, and everything else is absent. Note that "Internal Serial Interface to OA" is absent, and I tried sshing to the OA and running the "connect interconnect 1" command, and it says that feature isn't supported.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but I've looked around for a "manual" or "setup instructions" for this interconnect and I haven't found anything in HPE's resources or by googling.

Any ideas? I can provide more information about my setup if necessary.

[shiva_jr]

Hi @TheUbMunster ,

    This post may help you.
Regards,
Shiva_JR

[TheUbMunster]

It seems like that blog advises updating the firmware. Unfortunately, the hyperlinks are both dead. I've tried looking in HPE's resources on the support website but I can't find firmware. This post indicates that maybe it's bundled with the OA firmware, and mentions tftp. IIRC, I updated the OA firmware awhile ago and I don't remember tftp being involved in the process. I understand that since I updated the OA firmware before this interconnect module was installed, it couldn't have possibly been updated. I will look into seeing if the OA firmware has the interconnect firmware with it as well.

[TheUbMunster]

It seems I was wrong in that apparently the OA keeps ahold of the firmware file. After following the idea from this hpe support article, I ran the "update show" command on my OA CLI and found these results:

Device Name Location Version NewVersion

"TRAY" "Bladesystem c7000 Onboard Administrator Tray" "-" "1.7" "1.7"

"LCD" "Bladesystem c7000 Insight Display" "-" "2.8.3" "2.8.3"

"ICBAY" "HP 1Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module for c-Class" "1A" "3.0.3" "3.0.3"

"FAN (x10)" "Active Cool 200 Fan" "1-10" "2.9.4" "2.9.4"

It seems to me that all my firmware is up to date, since I updated my OA with the latest firmware as of a couple of months ago (4.97). Is there some datasheet somewhere that talks about the latest firmware versions for these things? If there are other method(s) to update these items that possibly have newer versions of firmware elsewhere, I'm not aware of them (but would like to be).

If it turns out my 1gb ethernet pass-thru module is up to date, what other things should I look into?

[Suvamay]

Hello 

Is there a functionality issue? or you just could not able to see the IP address in the EBIPA.

Have you tried accessing the switch through serial console ?

Thanks

[TheUbMunster]

The functionality issue is that I am unable to access virtual connect. When on the OA webpage, at the very bottom of the list, there should be a hyperlink to "Virtual Connect Manager", but it is not there.

As per the second paragraph in my original post, connecting to the interconnect via serial console is not possible, as the feature isn't supported ("Internal Serial Interface to OA" is absent).

There is an "Internal Ethernet Route to OA" which is what I should be able to connect to the Virtual Connect Manager through, but when assigning the address to interconnect bay 1 via EBIPA, the interconnect module simply won't take the IP address I assign. It simply continues to say 0.0.0.0.

[TheUbMunster · Accepted solution]

It seems this has turned in to a classic xy problem. To better describe my situation, I have a C7000 with three full-height blades in slots 1, 7, and 8. The pass-thru module is in interconnect bay 1. The pass-thru module had a configuration (or something) from it's previous use case, and upon installing it in the c7000, the "Virtual Connect Manager" entry was avaliable, but the previous static ip for the pass-thru module needed to be changed for this new setup, so I had to "factory reset" the interconnect module. I achieved this via advice from some other forum post that if you put the interconnect module in a different bay (e.g., bay 3) this will reset/remove the virtual connect manager config. Before I had "factory reset" the interconnect, I tested to see if the blades had an internet connection (they did, but there was strange behavior, e.g., one of the blades had 4 network adapters in windows, and another of the blades had 16 adapters in windows). I had assumed this strange behavior was an artifact of pre-existing configuration on the interconnect.

After resetting it and a few days later, I had tried to get a network connection again, but it wasn't working. I thought that some of the pre-existing settings in Virtual Connect Manager was allowing internet access, and since it had been reset, this was no longer the case.

Apparently what had been happening was that when I was testing network access on blade one, I had actually been plugging the network cable into the port corresponding to blade eight. Since the activity indicator was on (but windows wasn't having network access, because I was plugging it in the wrong port), I was assuming that the interconnect had some meta traffic going on (hence the activity indicator), but that windows wasn't seeing network access because the Virtual Connect Manager needed to be configured.

Since the ports corresponding to blade 1 and 8 are on opposite sides of the module, I had accidentally "mirrored" what I thought was the correct ports, so it's probably been functional from the start.

I saw another forum post saying that since it's a pass-thru module, it doesn't actually work with Virtual Connect Manager, as the ethernet is directly pass(ed)-thru to the OS. If the module is truly "logicless", then it kinda makes sense that EBIPA can't assign an IP address to it, because supposedly it doesn't have anything to even configure?

That said, I found some firmware for this module, and some instructions that say how to install it (over a serial connection, but I can't do that as outlined above).

There seems to be many things that I don't understand here, but ultimately I just wanted networking for the blades, which I now have.