Management Processor status while unplugged

[Craig McK]

Hiya,

We have approx 30 BL20p's in a live environment, however we only ever have 2 connections to iLO NICs at one time. As such the overall status of the BLs is listed as Major. Is there a way to stop monitoring the status of the MP without disabling the iLO? We'd like to keep them enabled so that if something happens we can connect one of the cables in to check it.

[Igor Karasik · Accepted solution]

Craig,
you can disable ILO status monitoring in
Control panel->HP management agents-> move "Remote insight information" to inactive agents.
Restart HP agents after this operation.

[David Claypool]

Craig--I gotta ask a dumb question. Why only 2 at a time? I have to assume that you're using the RJ45 patch panels and not the integrated switches and that you have non-enhanced enclosures (the enhanced enclosure aggregates all of the iLOs in an enclosure to a single connection) and are using outboard switches. But, again, why only 2 connections?

[Craig McK]

Hi David,

I believe the reasoning is that we only need to use the iLO in the event that we can't RDP onto the server - they all run 2k or 2k3 and the datacenter is 20 feet away. Just trying to keep the cables down =)
The integrated enclosure sounds useful though, I've not long started here and never used blades before..

[David Claypool]

Craig - Thanks for answering. We've found that many customers use iLO for more than just the remote console (but, since you're using remote desktop protocol, have you used iLO's Terminal Server Redirection to run RDP over the iLO connection? Cool stuff). Even though the data center may be only 20 feet away, some have used iLO extensively for all operations (power, virtual media, etc) and increased the physical security of the data center, restricting who actually goes in and minimizing their entries/exits.

[Craig McK]

Hm, will definately investigate that one =)
I just checked and I believe we just went for the base option - I've got some reading up to do it seems!
So far we always try and team the NICs for fault tolerance, so we've already got 2 cables connected. I'll have more of a fiddle with iLO and see what I can come up with anyway..
At least in the meantime I'll be able to show a greener board in the CIM =)
Thanks to you both!

c~