Errors configuring DPM

[HQN]

I'm having this problem which hopefully some of you have encountered and can help. I'm trying to set up DPM on a Unisys 7600R server. Following the steps outlined the vSphere documentation I access the Power Management section in the Configuration tab in the vSphere Client which directly connects to the vCenter. When presented with theEdit IPMI/iLO Settings window I enter the information for the username, password, BMC IP address, and BMC MAC address. I then click on the OK, and about 5-10 seconds I would receive an error message like this "One or more IPMI/iLO parameters are incorrect. Check that the username, password, MAC address, and IP address are valid for host xxxx, and that the BMC is correctly configured."

In my environment I have the setup on the company's public LAN and from a number of machines I could ping the BMC. I've also used the IPMITool running on a separate Linux machine and could access the Unisys 7600R server's BMC and perform power management tasks (like startup & shutdown) using the same information that I provide to the vSphere Client. So atleast I know that the connection is good and the BMC side is working. I have also tried things like setting up another BMC, or changing the format of the MAC address or moving the host to a different cluster or just by itself in the data center.

I've seached VMware communities and didn't find anything remotely similar to my problem.

I'm just out of ideas now and any help that you can provide is greatly appreciated.

regards,

HQN

PS. A screenshot is attached.

[AndreTheGiant]

Usually you can get this info from the BIOS configuration.

Be very sure on with card is active IPMI over LAN and check if it use a virtual MAC address.

Andre

[HQN]

Thanks for responding, Andre.

I'm confident of the information for the username/password, IP address, and MAC address. As I previously indicated I successfully used this information to test it with the IPMITool to power up and down the server. And I'm positive of what BMC card this information is for. I verified that the MAC address is not virtual. I also confirmed that the BMC does support plain-text and MD5 authentication as required in the VMware documentation.

[AndreTheGiant]

Have you make the tests from the vCenter Server?

Maybe there is some firewall problem.

Andre

[HQN]

Thanks for responding, Andre

By "...tests from vCenter" you mean doing what's mentioned in this Testing Before Adding to DRS section of this following article? http://solori.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/in-the-lab-vsphere-dpm-quirky-but-functional/

(btw, I got the above link from another thread which you replied to also regarding the DPM.)

that's basically what I'm doing. Other than that I don't think there's anything else to test from the vCenter without connecting from the vSphere Client?

I had thought about the firewall so from the machine running the vSphere Client I disabled the firewall but it still didn't help.

Yesterday, I set up another vCenter on a physical machine instead of using a virtual machine for vCenter like before, but it would not do any good.

I'm now trying the wireshark tool to check out the ipmi packets.

Thanks,

HQN

[AndreTheGiant]

I only mean that you have tried ipmi from a linux machine.

Could be useful to try it from vCenter Server.

Unfortunally I do not know the Unisys systems... maybe there is some other configuration to do.

Andre