PezJunkie wrote:
Even the health status page in the vSphere client is lacking for my ESX 4 server when compared to the same model server running ESX 3.5 u4.
The ESX 4 server only shows the 2 CPU's and 5 Software Components.
The ESX 3.5 server has Memory, Storage, Temperature, Fans, etc... all of which are missing for the ESX 4 server.
This is what you would see if the IPMI drivers were loaded on your ESX 3.5 server and not-loaded on ESX 4.0.
(Instructions given here for ESX/ESXi 3.5/4.0, for other readers who won't have the same releases as you.)
ESX 3.5 Classic uses vmnix Linux kernel IPMI drivers. Run lsmod | grep ipmi to check that they are loaded. I am certain you will see 3 drivers (ipmi_msghandler, ipmi_devintf, ipmi_si_drv).
ESXi 3.5, ESX 4.0 Classic and ESXi 4.0 all use a vmkernel port of the IPMI drivers. Run vmkload_mod -l | grep ipmi to check that they are loaded. I suspect that they won't show up on your 4.0 system.
You can also look for logged messages in /var/log/messages (except on ESX 4.0 Classic, where they would be in /var/log/vmkernel). The driver startup messages look similar to this reduced /var/log/messages excerpt:
ipmi message handler version 39
ipmi device interface version 39
IPMI System Interface driver version 39, KCS version 39, SMIC version 39, BT version 39
ipmi_si: Found SMBIOS-specified state machine at I/O address 0xca2
IPMI kcs interface initialized
The version numbers will be "39.1" on ESX/ESXi 4.0. On all of these releases except ESX 3.5 Classic there will also be a bunch of vmkernel module loading commentary, stuff like:
Loading module ipmi_msghandler ...
<ipmi_msghandler> symbols tagged as <GPL>
module heap : Initial heap size : 102400, max heap size: 4194304
module heap ipmi_msghandler: creation succeeded. id = 0x4100ba000000
Initialization for ipmi_msghandler succeeded with module ID 48.
ipmi_msghandler loaded successfully.
These aren't important if the loads succeed -- I just mention them so you aren't surprised.
Also remember that the logs are rotated over time -- if your host has been up for a while you will have to search messages.1 etc., possibly uncompressing them; and if it's been up a long time they might be completely gone.
Finally, if IPMI is not loaded and you think it should be (as in your case), you can manually load it with:
o ESX 3.5 Classic:
service ipmi start
o ESXi 3.5:
vmkload_mod -k ipmi_msghandler
vmkload_mod ipmi_si_drv
vmkload_mod ipmi_devintf
o ESX 4.0 Classic and ESXi 4.0:
esxcfg-init -I
Watch for related messages on the text console current screen, text console screen 12 (dynamic vmkernel log), and in /var/log/messages or /var/log/vmkernel.
The possibilities on your 4.0 system are:
o The machine just doesn't have an IPMI BMC. No matter what ESX release you load, IPMI driver load will fail.
o ESX 4.0 doesn't recognize that it has an IPMI BMC. Check BIOS setup to see if it's disabled. Post the driver load failure messages here. Run dmidecode from ESX console OS or from a random Linux 2.6 distro live CD: is IPMI mentioned? My SuperMicro box with IPMI, currently running ESX 3.5 Classic, shows:
Handle 0x0033
DMI type 38, 18 bytes.
IPMI Device Information
Interface Type: KCS (Keyboard Control Style)
Specification Version: 2.0
I2C Slave Address: 0x10
NV Storage Device: Not Present
Base Address: 0x0000000000000CA2 (I/O)
Register Spacing: Successive Byte Boundarieso ESX 4.0 does recognize the BMC, but something goes wrong during loading. Proceed as for non-recognition.
>Bela<
