Instruction Manual

keying errors. For interconnect modules, Onboard Administrator provides virtual power control,
dedicated serial consoles, and management Ethernet connections.
While Onboard Administrator is identifying components, the progress appears as steps on the
Insight Display. Discovery might take several minutes, and the number of installed mezzanine cards
on each server increases the time taken as each card is identified and verified.
Managing power and cooling
The most important Onboard Administrator tasks are power control and thermal management.
Onboard Administrator can remotely control the power state of all components in Superdome 2
compute enclosures. For components in device bays on the front of each enclosure, Onboard
Administrator communicates with iLO 3 to control blades, and with a microcontroller to control
options such as storage blades. A separate microcontroller controls power to the interconnect
modules.
After the components are powered on, the Onboard Administrator begins thermal management
with Thermal Logic. The Thermal Logic feature in Superdome 2 minimizes power consumption by
the enclosure fan subsystem by reading temperature sensors across the entire enclosure. Then,
Thermal Logic changes the fan speed in the various zones in the enclosure to minimize power
consumption and maximize cooling efficiency.
Controlling components
Onboard Administrator uses embedded management interfaces to provide detailed information
and health status of all bays in the enclosure including presence detection signals in each bay,
i2c, serial, USB, and Ethernet controllers. Onboard Administrator also offers information on firmware
versions for most components in the enclosure and can be used to update those components.
Managing partitions
The Onboard Administrator also enables users to define and manage partitions in a Superdome
2 complex.
An nPartition comprises one or more Superdome 2 Server Blades working as a single system. I/O
bays in IOX enclosures are assigned to nPartitions and any I/O component of a server blade,
including NICs and mezzanine cards are assigned to the nPartition containing the server blade.
In the complex, each nPartition has its own dedicated portion of the complex hardware which can
run a single instance of an operating system. Each nPartition can boot, reboot, and operate
independently of any other nPartitions and hardware within the same complex.
An nPartition includes all hardware assigned to the nPartition: all IOX I/O bays, I/O devices, and
server blades.
A complex can contain one or more nPartitions, enabling the hardware to function as a single
system or as multiple systems.
NOTE: For more information about partition creation and management, see the HP Integrity
Superdome 2 Partitioning Administrator Guide.
Interfaces
Each Superdome 2 compute enclosure has several external management interfaces that connect
the user to Onboard Administrator. The primary external management interface is the management
port for Onboard Administrator, which is an RJ-45 jack providing Ethernet communications not
only to Onboard Administrator, but also to every device or interconnect bay with a management
processor.
A serial port on the Onboard Administrator module provides full out-of-band CLI access to the
Onboard Administrator.
12 Introduction