Chassis IO Module Backplane Ports Test
The Cisco UCS chassis supports eight blade slots, and each blade has two Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors and up to 96GB of RAM. The chassis also has two SAS drive slots and a RAID controller, plus a connection to the backplane. The chassis is responsible for providing support infrastructure to blades via the backplane connection.
A backplane is a circuit board (usually a printed circuit board) that connects several connectors in parallel to each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors forming a computer bus. It is used as a backbone to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a complete computer system.
In Cisco UCS, all network traffic flows over FCoE directly from the chassis backplane to an FI (Fabric Interconnect) device.
To make sure that the blades in the chassis receive prompt and uninterrupted networking services, you need to frequently check whether the backplane ports of the chassis are available and operational. The Chassis IO Module Backplane Ports test makes this verification possible. At pre-configured intervals, this test monitors the health of each of the backplane ports in every I/O module of a chassis, and reports whether they are operational or not. Backplane ports experiencing errors, hardware failures, or software failures can thus be identified quickly and accurately.
Target of the test : A Cisco UCS manager
Agent deploying the test : A remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for each backplane port in each I/O module of every Cisco UCS chassis managed by the Cisco UCS manager being monitored.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
|
Test Period |
How often should the test be executed. |
|
Host |
The IP address of the host for which the test is being configured. |
|
Port |
The variable name of the port at which the specified host listens. |
|
UCS User and |
Provide the credentials of a user with at least read-only privileges to the target Cisco UCS manager. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the password by retyping it here. |
|
SSL |
By default, the Cisco UCS manager is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. |
|
Web Port |
By default, in most virtualized environments, Cisco UCS manager listens on port 80 (if not SSL-enabeld) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled) only. This implies that while monitoring Cisco UCS manager, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 80 or 443, depending upon the SSL-enabled status of Cisco UCS manager - i.e., if Cisco UCS manager is not SSL-enabled (i.e., if the SSL flag above is set to No), then the eG agent connects to Cisco UCS manager using port 80 by default, and if Cisco UCS manager is SSL-enabled (i.e., if the SSL flag is set to Yes), then the agent-Cisco UCS manager communication occurs via port 443 by default. Accordingly, the WebPort parameter is set to default by default. In some environments however, the default ports 80 or 443 might not apply. In such a case, against the WebPort parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the Cisco UCS manager in your environment listens, so that the eG agent communicates with that port for collecting metrics from the Cisco UCS manager. |
| Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Overall status |
Indicates the overall status of this backplane port. |
|
The States reported by this measure and their corresponding numeric equivalents are described in the table below:
Note: By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned States while indicating the overall health of a backplane port. However, in the graph of this measure, states will be represented using their corresponding numeric equivalents only. |
