IBM HS21 instruction

Workhorse 2-socket dual and quad-core

Intel Xeon blade server

Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 2.0-compliant systems management. It provides a number of important system functions, including:

•Monitoring of system and battery voltage, system temperature, fans, power supplies, processor and DIMM status

•Fan speed control

•Product ID and Family ID detection

•Highly secure remote power on/off

•System reset control

•NMI/SMI detection and generation

•System diagnostic LED control (power, HDD, activity, alerts, heartbeat)

•IPMI over LAN

•Serial Over LAN

•Proxy server support

•LAN messaging and alerting

•Text console redirection over LAN

•VLAN support

•Enhanced authentication and encryption algorithms (RMCP+, SHA-1, AES)

•Local update of BMC firmware

•Firmware firewall

•Support for IPMI v2.0 compliant management software (e.g., xCAT)

•Other mandatory and optional IPMI BMC functions

The BMC, via the management module, alerts IBM Director to anomalous environmental factors, such as voltage and thermal conditions—even if the server has failed.

Other systems management features offered for the combination of blade server and chassis include:

•Predictive Failure Analysis for system processors, memory and HDDs, as well as chassis switch modules, blower modules and power modules

•Web-based out-of-band control

•Windows “blue screen” capture

•Remote virtual media

•High-speed remote redirection of PCI video, keyboard and mouse

•SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) support

In order to put control of processor power-saving features at the fingertips of administrators, IBM developed IBM PowerExecutive™. IBM PowerExecutive is designed to take advantage of new processor features, such as balancing the performance of the system according to available power input. It provides the ability to plan and predict power consumption based on your BladeCenter hardware configuration. It also allows you to reduce the infrastructure required for redundancy, by using fewer servers on smaller power feeds and potentially lowering your overall data center support costs. It does this by inventorying all components at the blade level, then adding up the power draw for each blade and tracking that usage. In failure mode, PowerExecutive (through the BladeCenter Management Module) might request that certain blades in each domain throttle down to reduce power consumption.

Automatic Server Restart (ASR) helps reduce downtime by restarting the server automatically in the event of a system lockup. ASR technology is a combination of hardware circuitry tied into the server’s system reset function and a device driver. As long as the server continues running, the ASR watchdog timer will keep being reset, but if the operating system crashes or the hardware freezes somehow the ASR software will be unable to reset the hardware timer. If the timer is not reset within five minutes, it automatically triggers the ASR hardware, which immediately restarts the server (and logs an ASR event with IBM Director). These features are designed so that no more than five minutes can pass before the server is restarted.

Text and Graphics Console Redirect support allows the administrator to remotely view HS21 text and graphics messages over serial or LAN.

Wake on LAN permits the server to be remotely powered on if it has been shut off. Once powered up, the server can be controlled across the network, using the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE).

Like Wake on LAN, PXE is system firmware. It allows software such as the IBM Remote Deployment Manager to take control of a system before the BIOS, operating system or applications are loaded (using Wake on LAN/PXE) and lets an administrator perform many low-

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