Operating System Surveillance - IBM pSeries 690 User Manual

Operating System Surveillance

Note: Operating system surveillance is disabled in partitioned systems.
Operating system surveillance provides the service processor with a means to detect hang conditions, as
well as hardware or software failures, while the operating system is running. It also provides the operating
system with a means to detect a service processor failure caused by the lack of a return heartbeat.
Operating system surveillance is not enabled by default, allowing you to run operating systems that do not
support this service processor option.
You can also use service processor menus and AIX service aids to enable or disable operating system
surveillance.
For operating system surveillance to work correctly, you must set these parameters:
v Surveillance enable/disable
v Surveillance interval
The maximum time the service processor should wait for a heartbeat from the operating system before
timeout.
v Surveillance delay
The length of time to wait from the time the operating system is started to when the first heartbeat is
expected.
Surveillance does not take effect until the next time the operating system is started after the parameters
have been set.
If desired, you can initiate surveillance mode immediately from service aids. In addition to the three options
above, a fourth option allows you to select immediate surveillance, and rebooting of the system is not
necessarily required.
If operating system surveillance is enabled (and system firmware has passed control to the operating
system), and the service processor does not detect any heartbeats from the operating system, the service
processor assumes the system is hung and takes action according to the reboot/restart policy settings.
See "Service Processor Reboot/Restart Recovery" on page 57.
If surveillance is selected from the service processor menus that are only available at system boot, then
surveillance is enabled by default as soon as the system boots. From service aids, the selection is
optional.
70 Eserver pSeries 690 User's Guide