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Each server has a little ARM machine glued on the side with a dedicated ethernet port. Using standard protocols, as well as manufacturer extensions, we can do all sorts of useful things to the server remotely. Each machine's IPMI card has an IP address that resolves from host "rcXXipmi". Some of these include:
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- Get a serial-over-lan console on rcXX: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN -a sol activate
- Get the power status: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN chassis status
- Reboot a machine: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN power reset
- Force PXE boot on the next boot only: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN chassis booted pxe
- Reboot the IPMI card: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN mc reset cold
- Get sensor output: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN sdr list
- Get the error log: ipmitool -I lanplus -H rcXXipmi -U ADMIN sel elist
NB: Our SuperMicro machines appear to log SMART failures as OEM #0xff, e.g. ipmitool outputs something like:
| Code Block |
|---|
1 | 08/13/2011 | 07:08:13 | OEM #0xff | OEM Specific | Asserted |
ipmitool will ask for a password for user ADMIN in all cases. You can avoid this by putting it in a 0600 file and using the -f flag, or passing it on the command line (-P; not super-secure, but our environment is pretty trusted), or putting it in your environment (see the man page).
IPMI View
SuperMicro distributes a multi-platform Java GUI app called "IPMI View" that incorporates the above functions, and more. It's a bit slow and not amenable to scripting, but it does support the KVM console, which can be very useful. Note that your machine will have to be on the internal cluster VLAN to access the ipmi controllers.
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