Hello!
Today we will talk about some features of the servers that you will probably like.
Remote management
Many servers have IPMI interface. It allow administrators to manage server as a device via the network. It don’t need the operation system at the server. And it didn’t need to power on the server. If the power cable is plugged in – you will be able to control and monitor your server. It is very comfortable to be able to power on and power off the server without going to the server room. Especially if your server room is in the other building (for example I need to go to the server room about a kilometer). Huawei servers have iBMC management web-based solution. Let’s look at this.
At the top of the page you can see the upper-layer menu. At the left pane – second-layer menu is appearing. As you may see, there are many things that you can do with iBMC. Here are some of them:
Power on, power off and reset the server.
Look for the alarms.
Configure the fan mode.
Check hardware configuration.
Upgrade BIOS software.
Check load and temperature of the server components.
Remotely control the servers OS.
Change the UID state.
What is UID? It is good thing when you have a lot of same-looking equipment in the rack. It is a small blue LED. It can be on, off or blink. There is also a button at the front of the rack server to turn it on to find where the rear side of this server is.
You may see that I marked the labels at the rack. They are very useful and help to “load” the rack much faster.
Sometimes you will need to get the server out of the rack. And there are different types of the mounting rails for that. Rails can be very simple – just a shelf to put server on it and screw it at the front. They also can be more complicated and allow you to pull server from the rack and hold it secure in that position. You can even make something with the server when it is out of the rack.
Now let’s talk about cables at the rear part of the servers. If you want to pull the server out of the rack and to don’t power it off you will get the problems with the cables that will go away from there plugs. Pull-pull-pull-@#$ power disconnect. There is a solution – cable arm. We use them with some servers. They act also as cable organizers.
One of the most important feature is hot spare. If you have it you will be able to replace some devices and don’t power off the server for that. For example – replace the HDD.
