Blade LED Test
The BladeCenter chassis contains multiple blade slots to accommodate blade servers, also called blades or server blades. The blades are independent servers containing one or more processors, memory, disk storage, and network controllers. Each blade slot is designed with a set of LEDs to indicate the various states:
- Power - This green LED indicates the power status of the blade server
- Error or Fault - When this amber LED is lit, it indicates that a system error has occurred in the blade server. The blade-error LED turns off only after the error is corrected.
- Information - When this amber LED is lit, it indicates that information about a system event in the blade server has been placed in the Advanced-Management-Module event log.
Using these LEDs, administrators can find out the health, power state and errors (if any) of the blade slots at a single glance. Critical or fatal errors, power failures or connectivity failures of the blade slots can render the blades unavailable/inoperable. This in turn affects performance of the blades as well as the target chassis. To prevent such eventualities, it is imperative that administrators should closely monitor the blades and take immediate measures before the users complaint.
This test auto-discovers the blades on the target chassis and reports the availability and current health of each blade server. In addition, this test also reports the power supply status and the status of error LED of each blade.
Target of the test : An IBM BladeCenter Chassis
Agent deploying the test : An external agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for each blade in the BladeCenter chassis being monitored.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
|
Test Period |
How often should the test be executed. |
|
Host |
The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured. |
|
Port |
The port at which the device listens. By default, this will be NULL. |
|
SNMPPort |
The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; The default value is 161. |
|
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. |
|
SNMPCommunity |
The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the target host. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMPVersion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear. |
|
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 this parameter. |
|
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. |
|
AuthPass |
Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned UserName. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here. |
|
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:
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EncryptFlag |
This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. |
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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:
|
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EncryptPassword |
Specify the encryption password here. |
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Confirm Password |
Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here. |
|
Timeout |
Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds. |
|
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 this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No. |
|
Engine ID |
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. |
| Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Is exist? |
Indicates whether/not this blade slot exists. |
|
The values that this measure can report and the numeric values they indicate have been listed in the table below:
Note: By default, this measure can report the Measure Values mentioned above indicating whether each blade slot exists or not. However, the graph of this measure is indicated using the numeric equivalents. |
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Power state |
Indicates the current power state of this blade slot. |
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The values that this measure can report and the numeric values they indicate have been listed in the table below:
Note: By default, this measure can report the Measure Values mentioned above while indicating the current status of each blade slot . However, the graph of this measure is indicated using the numeric equivalents. |
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|
Health state |
Indicates the current health of this blade slot. |
The values that this measure can report and the numeric values they indicate have been listed in the table below:
Note: By default, this measure can report the Measure Values mentioned above while indicating the current health of each blade slot. However, the graph of this measure is indicated using the numeric equivalents. |
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Error LED state |
Indicates the current error LED state of this blade slot. |
The values that this measure can report and the numeric values they indicate have been listed in the table below:
Note: By default, this measure can report the Measure Values mentioned above while indicating the current status of the error LED of each blade slot . However, the graph of this measure is indicated using the numeric equivalents. |
