Disabled Nodes, Serial Number Name - Suggested Cause & Fix

[Tom McGuigan]

Like others I encountered a problem after upgrade to HPSIM 5.3 SP1 of many disabled nodes displayed only with a serial number, instead of the server/ilo name. After research and some testing, the following seems to explain the cause and provide a fix.
Hope this helps!
Comments welcome!
Tom
To fix the HPSIM Upgrade to 5.3SP1 "Disabled Nodes" problem;
1) Disable SMH and WS-MAN Globally (HPSIM upgrade re-enables these!!)
2) Identify all of the IP addresses of every disabled server and ILO node (over 300 nodes in my case!!).
3) Create a task to discover all of the disabled nodes.

[Tom McGuigan]

Ok, so I found the disabled nodes came back after a while, following the "fix" above.
It seems the problem is due to a new "feature" when identifying ILOs in v5.3 SP1. I noticed the following line in the log from identification of an ILO..."Create bare-metal server node if ILO is discovered with "Automatic Server discovery" option enabled."
Apparently, a "bare-metal server node" refers to the dreaded, recurring disabled serial-number-only nodes. I'd suggest disabling "Automatic server discovery" (at least until a better answer is offered by HP??

[htulumba]

We have also the issue with disabled nodes (orphaned nodes with serial number) concerning ESXi3.5 (on usb stick) and HP SIM 5.3 SP1.

How can I disable "Automatic server discovery"? Under Options -> Protocol Settings -> Global Protocol Settings I can only Enable/Disable WS-MAN, but not SMH. Or should I disable SSH?

Under Options -> Discovery -> Configure General Settings the following options are disabled:

- Automatically discover a system when an event is received from it
- Automatically discover a server when its Integrated Lights Out management processor is identified

Should I disable the remaining four options also?
- Discover systems in an enclosure when Onboard Administrator is discovered
- Automatically discover VM guest(s) when the host is identified.
- Automatically discover other virtual partitions within the same vPar Monitor when one of the virtual partition is identified
- Automatically discover all nPars within the same complex when one of the nPars is identified

Thanks

[Tom McGuigan]

I'd expect that disabling ALL auto-discovery options would eliminate rediscovery of any nodes as just serial numbers...but, we only use the ilo/blade auto-discovery option, so I cannot speak from experience. To test the theory...try disabling ALL auto-discovery options, delete the serial-number-only nodes, and wait to see if they reappear.