Edit: Some links no longer work.
Originally posted September 10, 2013 on AIXchange
If you connect a managed system to an HMC and it isn’t recognized, how can you troubleshoot the problem?
Well, it depends. What about the connection? Is your HMC behaving as a DHCP server, or have you assigned static IP addresses in your environment?
This interesting blog post offers some tips and tricks, although the IP addresses they recommended didn’t work for my customer.
The post concludes with this advice:
“If you have had both HMC-1 and HMC-2 connections possibly taken off their default IP addresses, one way that comes to mind is a ‘sniffer’ utility like WireShark. You can attach your laptop to one of the HMC connections and in a short amount of time determine the IP address of the system connection. If you do work like this, you should be familiar with tools of this type, and be prepared to use them in the case of an unknown IP address assignment.”
Here’s a nice document about accessing ASMI. If you’re dealing with a Power Systems Model 720 or 740, try this Redbook. Section 2.14.2 examines HMC connectivity; 2.14.3 looks at HMC high availability.
If the IP addresses are unknown or not working (perhaps the system was previously set up with static addresses but is now being connected to a new HMC), this video with Brian Smith could help. He discusses resetting an ASMI password and explains how to use the front panel to get the HMC IP addresses. Starting around 1:30, he shows how you can use the arrows on the front of the machine.This document, called “Managing the Control Panel Functions,” can also serve as a reference guide. Page 14 shows what is displayed when performing function 30 from getting in manual mode:
“Accessing the control panel functions using the physical control panel: The control panel functions correspond to function numbers on the control panel. To activate a control panel function, do the following:
- Select a function number by pressing the Increment (↑) or Decrement (↓) button on the control panel.
2. To activate the function, press Enter on the control panel.
Putting the physical control panel in manual operating mode: You must first put the physical control panel in manual operating mode before you can select or activate certain functions. To put the physical control panel in manual operating mode, do the following:
1.Use the Increment button to scroll to function 02.
02______________________________
2.Press Enter to start function 02.
3.Press Enter again to move to the second character on the function 02 menu. The current system operating mode is displayed with a pointer, as shown in the following example:
02__B__N<___________________P___
4.Use the Increment button to scroll through the system operating modes, and select M for manual, as shown in the following example:
02__B__M<___________________P___
5.Press Enter to select the system operating mode.
6.Press Enter again to exit function 02.
“The control panel is in manual operating mode”
Once you know the HMC IP address, it’s trivial to connect to it, login to ASMI and change the values to whatever is needed to establish communications with the HMC.
On another note, I wanted to try an experiment and include a few tweets that I thought were interesting. If you are already following @robmcnelly then some of these might be repeats, but hopefully the rest of you will find this information useful as well.
RT @AIXmag RT @kristijan: New blog post: AIX boot hangs with HMC 2700 LED code
RT @cgibbo RT @chmod666: Activating resources temporarily by using On/Off CoD
#IBM #PowerHA v7.1.2 for AIX Enprise Edition support for EMC SRDF