IBM BladeCenter HS22 Product Manual - page 11
Versatile, easy-to-use blade optimized for performance, power and cooling
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11.
standard
Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 2.0-compliant systems
management. The AMM 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
• VLAN support
• Enhanced authentication and encryption algorithms (RMCP+, SHA-1, AES)
• Local update of IMM firmware
• Firmware firewall
• Support for IPMI v2.0 compliant management software (e.g., xCAT)
• Other mandatory and optional IPMI functions in the blade’s IMM
The IMM, via the management module, alerts IBM Systems 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 Systems Director Active Energy Manager. Active Energy Manager 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 helps you 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,
Active Energy Manager (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 Systems 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 HS22
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-
level tasks remotely that would otherwise require a visit to each system. These tasks may