HP BL460c HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure technologies,4th edition - Page 8

are connected to the management network, providing redundant management network connections to each enclosure. A serial port on each BladeSystem Onboard Administrator module provides full out-of-band CLI access to the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator and is used for BladeSystem Onboard Administrator firmware flash recovery. USB ports on the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator are used to connect DVD drives to support the DVD feature in the c7000 enclosure. All c-Class enclosures support two enclosure link connectors that provide private communications between enclosures linked with CAT5 cable. In addition, the enclosure link-up connector provides an enclosure service port for temporarily connecting a laptop PC to any of the linked enclosure BladeSystem Onboard Administrators for local diagnostics and debugging. Updating firmware The BladeSystem Onboard Administrator manages firmware updates for the enclosure's management devices. Updating server blade firmware including server BIOS, NIC and mezzanine BIOS, and ProLiant Onboard Administrator (iLO 2) is possible using HP System Update Manager or the blade firmware update maintenance CD. These utilities can be connected to all the server blades in the enclosure using the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator enclosure DVD feature. When the active BladeSystem Onboard Administrator detects an external USB DVD drive plugged into the USB port, it scans the DVD drive for a CD or DVD disk. This disk can then be connected to one or more server blades at the same time using the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator GUI, CLI, or Insight Display. Redundant enclosure management Redundant enclosure management is an optional feature of the c7000. It requires installing a second BladeSystem Onboard Administrator module in the c7000 enclosure to act as a completely redundant controller in an active-standby mode. Using redundant modules in the c7000 enclosure provides complete fault tolerance. The redundancy logic is based on a continuous heartbeat between the two modules over a dedicated serial connection (Figure 4). If the period between heartbeats exceeds a timeout, the standby module automatically takes control of the enclosure and becomes the active BladeSystem Onboard Administrator. User interfaces for the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator Three user interfaces to the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator allow control and provide information about the enclosure and installed components: Web browser GUI Scriptable CLI Insight Display diagnostic LCD panel Additionally, the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator with KVM adds the ability to directly connect a KVM switch through the VGA port. Remote network access to the GUI and CLI is available through the management Ethernet port. A serial port is available for local CLI access and flash recovery. The c-Class enclosure link-up port is also available as the service port for temporary local Ethernet access to the BladeSystem Onboard Administrators and devices in linked enclosures. Insight Display is accessed directly through the buttons on the display or remotely through the GUI. Security User authentication maintains security for all user interfaces. User accounts created in the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator define three user privilege levels and the component bays to which each level is granted access. The BladeSystem Onboard Administrator stores the passwords for local user accounts and can be configured to use Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication for user group accounts. 8