Hitachi Blades Servers LED Test

The Hitachi Compute Blade allows accommodating up to eight dual-socket-based blade servers in the chassis. Critical or fatal physical damages, power failures or network connectivity failures can render the blade servers unavailable/inoperable. In environments where all the eight blade servers are accommodated in the chassis, if a single blade server fails or is critically damaged, then administrators may not be able to figure out the exact blade server that is problematic at a singe glance. To avoid such identification problems, each blade server is provided with the following LEDs:

  • Power LED and Alarm LED - visually indicate administrators to various power state changes and alarms generated in each blade server.
  • Attention LED - automatically turns on when the power button with LED was pressed explicitly. The attention automatically turns off when the main power is turned off.
  • Location identify LED - helps administrators in identifying the blade server.

If the LEDs fail or if the LEDs are damaged, then, administrators may be deprived of identifying the problematic blade server at a single glance. To avoid this issue, faulty LEDs should be identified and replaced immediately. The Hitachi Blades Servers LED test helps administrators to constantly keep a constant vigil on the status of the LEDs and the color of the LEDs.

This test auto-discovers the LEDs of each blade server and reports the current status of each LED and the color of the LED on each blade server. This way, administrators can be alerted to faulty LEDs and replace them at the earliest!

Target of the test : Hitachi Compute Blade

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the blade server:LED pair in the Hitachi Compute Blade being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the tests
  1. TEST PERIOD - How often should the test be executed
  2. Host – The IP address of the Hitachi Compute Blade
  3. SnmpPort – The port at which the Hitachi Compute Blade exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161.
  4. SNMPVERSION – By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the snmpversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.
  5. SNMPCommunity – The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the snmpversion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.
  6. username – This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the snmpversion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against the username parameter. 
  7. CONTEXT – This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the USERNAME provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the USERNAME in the CONTEXT text box.  By default, this parameter is set to none.
  8. authpass– Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned username. This parameter once again appears only if the snmpversion selected is v3.
  9. confirm password– Confirm the authpass by retyping it here.

  10. authtype – This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

    • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
    • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm
    • SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit
    • SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit
    • SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit
    • SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit
  1. encryptflag– This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the snmpversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the encryptflag is set to no by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the yes option. 

  2. encrypttype – If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

    • DES - Data Encryption Standard
    • 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard
    • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
    • AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit
    • AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit
    • AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit
  3. encryptpassword – Specify the encryption password here.
  4. confirm password – Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.
  5. TIMEOUT - Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in the TIMEOUT text box. The default is 10 seconds.
  6. DATA OVER TCP – By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set the data over tcp flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.
  7. ENGINEID - This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
LED status

Indicates the current status of this LED.

 

The values that this measure can report and the numeric values they indicate have been listed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric value

Turn Off

 1

Turn On

 2

Unknown

 3

Blink

 4

Blink Fast

 5

Blink Slow

 6

Note:

By default, this measure can report the States mentioned above while indicating the current status of this LED in the blade server. However, the graph of this measure is indicated using the numeric equivalents.
LED color

Indicates the color of this LED.

 

The values that this measure can report and the numeric values they indicate have been listed in the table below:

Color Numeric Value

Blue

 1

Green

 2

Red

 3

Amber

 4

Unknown

 0

Note:

By default, this measure can report the Colors mentioned above while indicating the color emitted by this LED. However, the graph of this measure is indicated using the numeric equivalents.