Service Processor; Server Console Access By Sol - IBM BladeCenter PS700 Technical Overview And Introduction

The IVE implementation on the PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades use a maximum rate of 1
Gbps and the HEA ports are integrated onto the base blades and expansion unit. The two
physical ports on the PS700 and PS701 are associated to a single logical port group. The two
additional physical ports on the PS702 expansion unit are associated to a second port group.
Each port group can address up to 16 logical ports, A maximum of 16 MAC addresses are
assigned to a port group. A maximum of one logical port per physical port can be given to a
LPAR.
The HEA ports are connected to the BladeCenter I/O switch module bays 1 and 2, with the
exception of the BladeCenter S. The BladeCenter S connects all HEA ports to I/O switch
module bay 1.
Note: On PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades, as of this writing, Virtual I/O Server must be
installed on the blade to configure IVE logical ports through Integrated Virtualization
Manager (IVM). Native operating system installations can only use the physical ports.
IVE does not have flash memory for its open firmware but it is stored in the service processor
flash and then passed to POWER Hypervisor control. Flash code update, therefore, is done
by the POWER Hypervisor.
Important: The HEA port implementation on the PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades
always shows a link status of up, and should be considered when implementing network
failover scenarios.

2.8 Service processor

The service processor (previously known as the Flexible Service Processor or FSP) is used
to monitor and manage the system hardware resources and devices. In a POWER7-based
blade implementation the external network connection for the service processor is routed
through an on-blade Ethernet switch, through the BladeCenter midplane, chassis switches
and to the AMM. The Serial over LAN (SOL) connection for a system console uses this same
connection.When the blade is in standby power mode the service processor responds to
AMM instructions and can detect Wake-on-LAN (WOL) packets.
The PS700 and PS701 each have a single service processor. The PS702 has a second
service processor in the expansion unit. However, it is only used for controlling and managing
the hardware on this second planar.

2.8.1 Server console access by SOL

The PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades do not have an on-board video chip and do not
support KVM connections. Server console access is obtain by a SOL connection.
SOL provides a means to manage servers remotely by using a command-line interface (CLI)
over a Telnet or secure shell (SSH) connection. SOL is required to manage servers that do
not have KVM support. SOL provides console redirection for both System Management
Services (SMS) and the blade server operating system. The SOL feature redirects server
serial-connection data over a LAN without requiring special cabling. The SOL connection
enables blade servers to be managed from any remote location with network access.
Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
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