| Sun Blade T6300 Server Module Administration Guide |    
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| Sun Blade T6300 Server Module Administration Guide |
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| C H A P T E R 2 |
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Managing RAS Features and System Firmware |
This chapter describes how to manage reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features and system firmware, including the Sun Advanced Lights Out Manager (ALOM) system controller, and Automatic System Recovery (ASR). In addition, this chapter describes how to unconfigure and reconfigure a device manually, and introduces multipathing software.
This chapter contains the following sections:
The behavior of LEDs on your server conforms to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Status Indicator Standard (SIS). These standard LED behaviors are described in TABLE 2-1.
The LEDs have assigned meanings, described in TABLE 2-2.
You control the Locator LED from the sc> prompt or by the Locator button on the front of the server module.
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Note - You do not need user permissions to use the setlocator and showlocator commands. |
Automatic System Recovery functionality enables the system to resume operation after experiencing certain nonfatal hardware faults or failures. When ASR is enabled, the system's firmware diagnostics automatically detect failed hardware components. An autoconfiguring capability designed into the system firmware enables the system to unconfigure failed components and to restore system operation. As long as the system is capable of operating without the failed component, the ASR features enable the system to reboot automatically, without operator intervention.
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Note - ASR is not activated until you enable it. See Enabling and Disabling Automatic System Recovery. |
The system firmware stores a configuration variable called auto-boot?, which controls whether the firmware automatically boots the operating system after each reset. The default setting for Sun platforms is true.
Normally, if a system fails power-on diagnostics, auto-boot? is ignored and the system does not boot unless an operator boots the system manually. An automatic boot is generally not acceptable for booting a system in a degraded state. Therefore, the server's OpenBoot firmware provides a second setting, auto-boot-on-error?. This setting controls whether the system will attempt a degraded boot when a subsystem failure is detected. Both the auto-boot? and auto-boot-on-error? switches must be set to true to enable an automatic degraded boot.
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Note - The default setting for auto-boot-on-error? is false. The system will not attempt a degraded boot unless you change this setting to true. In addition, the system will not attempt a degraded boot in response to any fatal nonrecoverable error, even if degraded booting is enabled. For examples of fatal nonrecoverable errors, see Error Handling Summary. |
Error handling during the power-on sequence falls into one of the following three cases:
When a DIMM fails, the firmware unconfigures the entire logical bank associated with the failed server module. Another nonfailing logical bank must be present in the system for the system to attempt a degraded boot. Note that certain DIMM failures might not be diagnosable to a single DIMM. These failures are fatal, and result in both logical banks being unconfigured.
Three ALOM configuration variables, diag_mode, diag_level, and diag_trigger, control whether the system runs firmware diagnostics in response to system reset events.
The standard system reset protocol bypasses POST completely unless the virtual keyswitch or ALOM variables are set as follows:
Therefore, ASR is enabled by default. For instructions, see Enabling and Disabling Automatic System Recovery.
ALOM commands are available for enabling and disabling ASR and for obtaining ASR status information.
The ASR feature is not activated until you enable it. Enabling ASR requires changing configuration variables in ALOM as well as OpenBoot firmware.
3. To cause the parameter changes to take effect, type:
The system permanently stores the parameter changes and boots automatically when the OpenBoot configuration variable auto-boot? is set to true (its default value).
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Note - To store parameter changes, you can also power cycle the system using the front panel Power button. |
2. To cause the parameter changes to take effect, type:
The system permanently stores the parameter change.
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Note - To store parameter changes, you can also power cycle the system using the front panel Power button. |
After you disable the ASR feature, it is not activated again until you re-enable it.
Use the following procedure to retrieve information about the status of system components affected by ASR.
In the showcomponent command output, any devices marked disabled have been manually unconfigured using the system firmware. The showcomponent command also lists devices that have failed firmware diagnostics and have been automatically unconfigured by the system firmware.
To support a degraded boot capability, the ALOM firmware provides the disablecomponent command, which enables you to unconfigure system devices manually. This command flags the specified device as disabled by creating an entry in the ASR database.
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The asr-key is one of the device identifiers from TABLE 2-5
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Note - The device identifiers are not case-sensitive. You can type them as uppercase or lowercase characters. |
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where asr-key is any device identifier from TABLE 2-5.
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Note - The device identifiers are not case-sensitive. You can type them as uppercase or lowercase characters. |
You can use the ALOM enablecomponent command to reconfigure any device that you previously unconfigured with the disablecomponent command.
ALOM software enables you to display current valid system faults. The showfaults command displays the fault ID, the faulted FRU device, and the fault message to standard output. The showfaults command also displays POST results.
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Adding the -v option displays additional information,
For more information about the showfaults command, refer to the Advanced Lights Out Management (ALOM) CMT v1.3 Guide.
Multipathing software enables you to define and control redundant physical paths to I/O devices, such as storage devices and network interfaces. If the active path to a device becomes unavailable, the software can automatically switch to an alternate path to maintain availability. This capability is known as automatic failover. To take advantage of multipathing capabilities, you must configure the server with redundant hardware, such as redundant network interfaces or two host bus adapters connected to the same dual-ported storage array.
For your server, three different types of multipathing software are available:
Traffic Manager is an architecture fully integrated within the Solaris OS (beginning with the Solaris 8 release) that enables I/O devices to be accessed through multiple host controller interfaces from a single instance of the I/O device.
For instructions on how to configure and administer Solaris IP Network Multipathing software, consult the IP Network Multipathing Administration Guide provided with your specific Solaris release.
For information about VVM and its DMP feature, refer to the documentation provided with the VERITAS Volume Manager software.
For information about Sun StorageTek Traffic Manager, refer to your Solaris OS documentation.
The setfru command enables you to store information on FRU PROMs. For example, you might store information identifying the server in which the FRUs have been installed.
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| Sun Blade T6300 Server Module Administration Guide | 820-0277-10 |
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Copyright © 2007, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
To Turn On the Locator LED 