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Posts tagged iLO
How to Bare Metal Deploy a Hyper-V server via VMM2012 and HP iLO
Nov 8th
Some time ago I did a series on Bare Metal Deployment of Hyper-V servers with Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta. Back in March I tested with HP BL460 G6 servers which have an Insight Lights-Out (iLO2) Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). This time I was able to test with the RC build and HP BL490 G6 blades as well as DL360 G7 rack servers (which have a newer iLO3 onboard).
For beta there was a possibility to generate a customized Out-of-Band (OOB) protocol for HP iLO. Unfortunately that is not supported anymore and Microsoft advised me to use the IPMI protocol. After some experiments I figured out that this required a recent firmware (v2.07 of iLO2 to be precise). So after updating the firmware I was able to discover my physical servers via their iLO IP address combined with the right account/password combination which I saved as a Run As Account.
As you can see – when using IPMI with iLO2 (in this case) — there is a limited set of information returned. It lacks Manufacturer, Model, Serial Number, etc. What is worse … it returns an SMBIOS ID that is different from the one VMM2012 expects when you perform a Bare Metal Deployment of one or more Hyper-V R2 servers.
When you continue the Add Resource Wizard, the bare metal server will boot from the PXE server. This is where things go wrong.
SCVMM 2012 – Out of Band Management (OOB)
Apr 14th
As I wrote earlier in my blog on Deep Storage Integration in VMM 2012, Microsoft decided to embrace standards as much as possible in SCVMM 2012. This is also the case in the area of Out of Band Management (OOB). Microsoft supports several standards based options:
OOB is of course intended to take control of the bare metal machine using some kind of baseboard management controller (BMC). In the HP world we know OOB very well by the name of Insight Lights Out (iLO2 and iLO3). Dell has a BMC called DRAC which stands for Dell Remote Access Controller. IBM has a Remote Supervisor Adapter or RSA. OOB can serve several purposes. One is power state control (query status, power on and power off) but also to collect information about the server hardware (SMBIOS GUID, Manufacturer, Model, AssetTag, Serial Number) or to collect system hardware logs. The ultimate goal is to leave the bare metal untouched, yet under your total control.
We can think of several scenarios:
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Bare Metal Deployment
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Dynamic Optimization
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Power Optimization
The Out of Band Management interface in SCVMM 2012 is fully extensible and offers custom OOB Configuration Providers. Here is an example of such a provider in Powershell.
Making Life Easier with HP ProLiant and Insight Lights Out (iLO)
Sep 28th
HP ProLiant Servers have been there for ages and ages. For twenty years in fact. I can’t even remember when Insight Lights Out was introduced. After iLO came iLO 2 and now we are at iLO 3.
At HP’s website iLO is described as a remote management technology that
delivers precise control and web-based remote management that is always available. ProLiant iLO products… make it easier to remotely manage your servers from just about anywhere in the world. HP iLO solutions use a common management interface for both Integrity and ProLiant servers which means you can use similar tools and processes to manage all your HP Servers.
It is exactly the word precise control that still puzzles many server admins. The first thing they do is turn on Remote Desktop to remote control the server via Windows. During remote management with iLO they often see an irritating distance between two mouse pointers.
If you recognize this problem, this blog is for you.
Because I come across quite a few people who don’t know how to solve this problem, I will explain the steps:
Either in the HP Blade Onboard Administrator Console or in the iLO console goto Web Administration.
Login with an administrator account are accept the automatic pass-through from the blade enclosure administrator.
Select the Remote Console tab and Settings from the menu on the left. Just change the High Performance Mouse from to the Enabled value and you are done! Enjoy a synchronized pointer in your iLO management screens.
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