The advanced management module

The advanced management module provides system-management functions and keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) switching for all of the blade servers in a BladeCenter® chassis that support KVM. It supports the external keyboard, mouse, and video connections, for use by a local console, and a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet remote management connection.

Each BladeCenter chassis comes with at least one advanced management module. Most BladeCenter chassis support the installation of a second, redundant advanced management module. Only one advanced management module can control the BladeCenter system at a time. It is identified as the primary. The advanced management module that is not active is identified as the standby. The primary advanced management module can be detected visually by the Active LED on the management indicator panel or through the advanced management module Web interface.

Note: Do not install an advanced management module and a management module in the same BladeCenter chassis.

The firmware level on the standby advanced management module is automatically updated from the primary advanced management module. Verify they are the same firmware level from within the advanced management module Web interface before attempting to manually switch over to the standby. If the active advanced management module should fail, the standby advanced management module will automatically take over management functions of the chassis. If the standby advanced management module should fail, the primary advanced management module will record the failure and disable automatic failover.

The standby advanced management module can be put on the network using advanced failover settings, but it only provides enough function to ping and take over for the active advanced management module using the web interface if there is an error.

The advanced management module does not provide notification of a failover. However, it does provide notification when the primary and standby advanced management modules are established, such as when a failover occurs. For example, these events can be seen in the event log:

0x06000201 Management Module in bay 1 is primary.
0x06000202 Management Module in bay 2 is primary.
0x06000301 Management Module in bay 1 is standby.
0x06000302 Management Module in bay 2 is standby.

Status and problems on the standby advanced management module are available on the active advanced management module. Notifications and status are only available from the active advanced management module.

In addition to the advanced management module event log, use the information from I/O module logs and operating system logs on the blade servers to help isolate issues. These logs are not available through the advanced management module.