Remote managemnt - looking at hardware issue (using ALOM ) Server rebooting

UNIX Solaris
1

Hi

we have A sun4v SPARC Enterprise T2000
It has started to go down frequently without producing any corefiles.
There is nothing in the logs to induicate any issues.
So I'm trying to remotely check this and get to see if there are any hardware issue. I heard about ALOm and I think this is pre-installed on this type of box. The server is not physically close to where I'm
Can somone please advuise as to how I can remote into this host and look at the hardware information in that way ? Can ALOM be used remotely?

Or any suggestion as why the host may reboot? I assume it's a hardware issue?

It is back on line.
Is there anyway of looking

2

ALOM is designed to be used remotely, however, it needs to be configured first. There are "SER MGT" and "NET MGT" ports. The SER is a serial interface (RS232) but don't be confused by the fact that it's presented as a RJ45. The NET port is an ethernet interface which can be cabled to a switch but needs it's ip address, etc set up. Once that is done you can remotely connect to the ALOM.

Alternatively, you can connect the SER port to an Ethernet to serial device and then access that via Ethernet.

Has the T2000 had any recent changes? eg. O/S upgrade.

1 Like
3

Hi

Thanks for your reply.
No There has been no upgrade or changes applies to these servers.
I will not be able to connect this to the network port.

I have never done this before. How will you connect to the server locally? Over the serial port? What do I need to conenct and how will I get to ALOM promt?
I looked and found out that there are ALOM commands that I can execute, but not sure how to do this?
I'm trying to see how I can get some of the information from shell command

Any advise will be greatly apperciated

---------- Post updated at 10:01 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:55 AM ----------

prtdiag -v does the firmware version
Still not sure about how to get to ALOM prompt ..

4

For remote access to the SC you have two choices

  1. Configure the NET MGT port
  2. Connect the SER MGT port to the Ethernet somehow

For (2) you need some type of reverse terminal server (eg. Avocent Cyclades) which will allow you to connect to it through Ethernet (LAN/WAN) and give you access to a serial port which you have connected to the Sun SER MGT.

There are individual port devices available which can connect a serial RS232 interface to a LAN.

There's no way AFAIK to connect to the SC via a normal login session to the O/S.

I asked whether the O/S has been upgraded at all because I know that recent Solaris updates can be incompatible with older firmware versions causing the system to crash (but Oracle don't say this in release notes). I have personally had some nasty experiences with T2000's specifically with this.

5

I've had nasty experiences with t2000's in general. :slight_smile: