Sun N1 System Manager 1.3 Troubleshooting Guide

Cannot Discover a Manageable Server

Failure to discover a manageable server can be caused by many different issues. This section provides guidelines and references to help you resolve each issue.

The following topics are discussed:

Discovery of RSC Servers

Manageable servers based on the Remote System Control (RSC) technology, such as Sun Fire V490 and V890 series servers, must be powered off before they can be discovered by N1 System Manager. RSC servers must remain powered off until discovery is complete and discovery has been confirmed by using the show server command.


Note –

The first time the show server command is used to identify a newly discovered RSC server, the command can take up to 5 minutes to complete.


The console of an RSC server must not be in use when being discovered. These servers must also be bench configured prior to discovery. For details on bench configuration of RSC servers, see Preparing RSC-based Manageable Servers in Sun N1 System Manager 1.3 Site Preparation Guide.

If the RSC manageable server was not powered off before being discovered by N1 System Manager, the server MAC address is not detected. Subsequent attempts to load an OS on the server fail with the following message:

Operation failed

In this case, stop the managed server:


N1-ok> stop server server force true

Refresh the managed server to retrieve the server's MAC address:


N1-ok> set server server refresh

This command can take up to 5 minutes to complete. Once complete, an OS can be provisioned on to the RSC server using N1 System Manager.

Incorrect Firmware is Installed on the Managed Server

The managed server firmware might be too old.

Verify the firmware version and, if necessary, update the firmware. For a list of qualified firmware versions, see Manageable Server Firmware Requirements in Sun N1 System Manager 1.3 Site Preparation Guide.

Maximum Number of SNMP Connections has been Exceeded

If discovery fails, the target server has reached its maximum number of SNMP connections if the following is contained in the job output:

Error. The limit on the number of SNMP destinations has been exceeded.

The service processor of the Sun Fire V20z and V40z server has a limit of three SNMP destinations. To see the current SNMP destinations, perform the following steps:

  1. Log into the service processor using SSH.

  2. Run the following command:


    sp get snmp-destinations

The SNMP destinations appear in the output.

If there are three destinations for a V20z or a V40z, discovery will fail. The failure occurs because the N1 System Manager adds another snmp-destination to the service processor during discovery.

The SNMP destinations can be configured in a service processor by N1 System Manager or some other management software. You can delete entries from the SNMP destinations if you know that the SNMP destination entry is no longer needed. This would be the case if you discovered the target server using N1 System Manager on one management server and then decided to not use that management server without deleting the server. You can use the sp delete snmp-destination command on the service processor if you need to delete an entry. Use the delete command with caution because some other management software may need the entry for monitoring. A manageable server's SNMP destination is deleted, however, when the server is deleted from the N1 System Manager using the delete server command. It is best practice always to use the delete server command when removing a manageable server.