Study Notes

SS2280, implemented with Intel Woodcrest Dual-Core processor: enhance server visualization, faster networking. The dual core technology improves significiently the computing speed by running applications in parrellel, instead one stage each time and more to the next in line.

North bridge: Intel Blackford North Bridge. (BNB)
South bridge: ESB2E, Enterprise South Bridge 2.
PHY: Physical Layer Transceiver.
OOB: Out of Bond
VRD: Voltage Regular Down
SDR: Sensor Data Repository

The most advanced management controller, “Server Engine Pilot”, which combines baseboad management controller and graphics controller into one single chip. Such technology lowers down not only the cost, making you budget more economy, but also minimize the space of board. This chip features its enhanced performance on remote management through web service. The KVM, USB storage can also be included in the domain of remote control.

There’s something wrong with the BMC chip in last Monday, as we can not access its web service while ping is OK. Even restart the server, the BMC was not found. Later I fixed this issue by plugging out the power cable, wait for about 30 seconds, and then start up. The support engineer of SS2280 doubled it was a single failure, and suggested me to verify the following 4 servers coming in this week.

BMC monitors the fan speed according to the temperature the sensors have detected and make an appropriate adjustment and management. BMC is also responsible for monitoring of power unit through the way of checking events via SMBus. There’s anther chipset called Winbond 83627HG-AW embedded in baseboard, that also has monitoring functions. The support engineer told me it is BMC to monitor the system environment, not Winbond chips.

In the early test, I installed CentOS 4.4 with lm_sensor packages on SS2280, and then executing “sensor_detect” command detected three sensor on the board: BMC, Winbond83627HF and i2c. “sensor” command returned wired datas about all monitored elements. At first, I want to get the correct data by following up Winbond83627HF, but can not find the related driver. The support engineer gave me the hints that OpenIPMI is the default package of Linux. Then I installed this package, and using its command “ipmitool sensor” to get appropriate contents about environment. OpenIPMI provides virtual power function, that maybe useful for our BA880 to replace the physical fenced device(APC). I will study OpenIPMI in the following weeks.