User talk:Wikiban43

Objective
My prime objective is to introduce the fundamental concepts of On Board Administrator Guide in this talk.

What is an Onboard Administrator
HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator is the enclosure management processor, subsystem, and firmware base used to support the HP BladeSystem c-Class enclosure and all the managed devices contained within the enclosure. In short, it is an onboard component that manages all the blades and accessories in a blade enclosure and aids in detecting, power supply, cooling and network settings of the blades.

Redundant Onboard Administrator
A redundant OA module basically helps in keeping a back-up OA that performs the OA functionaries in case of failure of the main OA component. Such a back-up OA keeps full control on the OA functions like power supply, cooling, ethernet communication to OA etc.

Access methods
To communicate with the HP blade OA web interface, we primarily need a compatible web browser and the OA IP address.To access HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator CLI, use HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator IP address and a terminal or terminal application. To access the CLI interface, you must use Telnet (incoming port 23) or SSH depending on which of these protocols are enabled.

Component insertion and removal detection
As mentioned earlier, an OA detects the enclosure components (either preexisting or as soon as we insert them). It does this with the help of presence signals coming from the component bay. When we eject a component, the OA immediately deletes all information of those components.

Identifying components
To identify a component(blades) in the blade enclosure, the OA reads the FRU EEPROM associated with each of the blades. These FRU EEPROMs are powered up even when the blade turned off. This is obvious because before granting power to the blades, the OA needs to identify them.

While the OA identifies components, the steps occur in the insight display component.

Managing power and cooling
As far as I've understood, once the components inside an enclosure are powered(as per need), the OA reads the temperature from the temperature sensors(similar in function to thermometers) fitted around the entire enclosure. There is a program called Thermal Logic executing which aids in managing the speed of the cooling fans.

Interfaces
I didn't understand much regarding this. All that I can say is to aid the users connect to the OA, the system has several external management interfaces. One of such interfaces is the management port of blade system, which is nothing but an RJ45 jack which provides ethernet communication to the OA as well as all the other components with a management processor.

There are USB ports on the OA that can be used for different purposes like connecting an external DVD drive to it. They generally have a sticker on them. This sticker, when removed, makes the USB ports fit for use.

For local diagnostics and debugging, we can use the enclosure link ports of OA. Through it, we can even connect our Laptop or PC to the OA temporarily.

Each c-class enclosure provides an insight display on the front of enclosure. Insight display provides status information of all the bays (probably component trays) in the enclosure. It also provides diagnostic information in case the OA detects a problem. It configures key settings in the OA including its IP.

Onboard Administrator user interfaces
There are four standard user interfaces available in OA:
 * 1) Web interface GUI
 * 2) Scriptable CLI
 * 3) Insight Display
 * 4) Optional KVM module

Remote access to OA GUI/CLI is done through the management ethernet port.For local CLI access, the serial port is used.There is another c-class enclosure link up port which is not very clear to me.

Onboard Administrator Authentication
There are three levels of users in an OA.
 * 1) Admin- This user has the privilege of creating/deleting user accounts.
 * 2) Operator- This user has full information access, limited privileges and control on only the assigned component bays.
 * 3) User- General users don't have control privileges. They have information access rights only.

The users need to login into the system (through the web GUI or OA CLI) by providing correct user ids and passwords. The account can be a local one, i.e., where the password is stored in the OA itself or it can be an LDAP one where the user credentials are stored in an LDAP server. For authentication purpose, the OA needs to contact the assigned LDAP server.

Rather than requiring separate logins to multiple resources (once to each enclosure and/or once to every server management processor), Onboard Administrator allows single point access. Thus, the administrator can use single sign-on to log in to a single Onboard Administrator and use the web GUI to graphically view and manage the HP BladeSystem c-Class components in up to four linked enclosures. For example, an IT administrator can automatically propagate management commands-such as changing the enclosure power mode-throughout the linked enclosures.