Host Watchdog Overview

Note:

Starting with Oracle Hardware Management Pack (HMP) 2.4.9.0, the HMP watchdog agent and associated ILOM and host watchdog services are no longer available.

The host watchdog causes Oracle ILOM to watch the host. If the host becomes unresponsive, Oracle ILOM performs a customer-configured action, which can be: Warning, Reset, Power Off, or Power Cycle.

You can control the host watchdog parameters using the ilomconfig command, or by editing the HMP watchdog agent's configuration file. The ilomconfig command is the preferred method for controlling host watchdog.

See Host Watchdog Parameters for more information on the host watchdog parameters that you can modify.

Host watchdog is built on top of standard IPMI watchdog timer capability. The host watchdog interacts with the IPMI watchdog timer as follows:

• When the host watchdog is enabled by the user, it first checks to see if the IPMI watchdog timer is already started. If the IPMI watchdog timer is started, the host watchdog issues a log message indicating that the watchdog timer is already started, and the host watchdog remains in the Disable state.

• When the host watchdog has already been enabled, the host watchdog periodically resets the IPMI watchdog timer to the configuration values of host watchdog. This takes care of the case where someone changes configuration outside of HMP watchdog agent.

• When the OS hangs, the IPMI watchdog timer is not reset by the time the timer expires. This causes Oracle ILOM to perform the action specified by timer-action parameter.