Inventory

The discovery process entails seeking out and identifying the software and hardware components in the PMAC inventory. The user views the discovery data as inventory via the PMAC GUI.

Enclosure Discovery

The PMAC application provides the ability to discover the software and hardware present on the enclosure (such as server blades and power supplies). Discovery is initiated on a per-enclosure basis when PMAC performs an Add Enclosure operation. PMAC creates a background task to discover the software and hardware components present in the enclosure when the enclosure is added to the hardware inventory. Once an enclosure is provisioned, discovery occurs again when PMAC gets restarted (after a reboot or after a shutdown).

Once an enclosure is being managed by PMAC, the Onboard Administrator obtains the discovery information and passes it to PMAC. PMAC receives asynchronous events such as server blade insertion and removal from the Onboard Administrator and uses the information to update the hardware inventory data. PMAC periodically retrieves information about the software inventory.

RMS Discovery

The PMAC application provides the ability to discover the software and hardware present on an RMS. Discovery is initiated on a per-RMS basis when PMAC performs an Add/Edit RMS operation. Once an RMS is provisioned, discovery occurs again when PMAC gets restarted (after a reboot or after a shutdown). PMAC also periodically re-discovers RMS hardware information to keep the inventory up-to-date.

The PMAC GUI provides the following types of information for hardware inventory:

• A summary of the system inventory with details about the cabinets, enclosures, and RMSs.
• An enclosure schematic that shows which enclosure bays are occupied, which are empty, and what type of component, such as server blade or power supplies, each bay contains.
• A list of the physical server blade locations in the enclosure.
• Enclosure and enclosure-component (such as power supplies or fan tray) details such as manufacturer, product name, serial number, and part number.
• A list of the physical RMS in the system.
• A cabinet inventory page shows the provisioned enclosures and RMSs for that cabinet. The view within this work area provides the overview of hardware associated with specific cabinet. The rows that are populated in the Provisioned Enclosures index card and Provisioned RMS index card depend on actual hardware of the system associated with the cabinet. It is also possible that an index card will not be displayed at all if it does not contain any entries.
• RMSs not associated with a cabinet are located under Cabinet Unspecified.

The PMAC GUI provides the following types of information for software inventory:

• Operating system name and version
• Application name and version
• Function
• Designation
• Hostname
• Location
• IP Address

See System inventory information for additional information related to system inventory.