Alternative to Power Controllers: Virtual Power Controllers
Intended for use with Cassatt Active Response V5.0.
If your application nodes do not have power controllers, or the power controllers are not supported by Cassatt Active Response at this time, Cassatt recommends using external power controllers as described in: External Power Controllers: Configuration and Management. However, if external power controllers are not an option, Cassatt Active Response can still manage any node from Sun or Intel without power controllers. It does requires that you manually add the nodes in Cassatt Active Response, and power on them on once: after that, Cassatt Active Response manages nodes similar to nodes with integrated power controllers.
Cassatt Active Response without power controllers: what you should know
When you configure a node without a power controller in the Controller, you assign it the keyword "Virtual" so it can be managed by the Cassatt Active Response virtual power module. When you boot the node, a special "idle" image is used. Nodes running the idle image are shown in the Controller as offline.
When Cassatt Active Response allocates a virtual power controller to a tier, it contacts the node via ssh, resets the PXE configuration to point to the applicable tier image, then reboots the node. If Cassatt Active Response needs to harvest the application node for use in another tier, it repeats the process, specifying yet another tier image. To take a node out of service, Cassatt Active Response points the application node back to the idle image.
Application nodes without power controllers never truly power off because they
run the idle image whenever they are "offline." Consequently, these nodes continuously consume electricity, even when they are not performing
useful work.
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Virtual power controllers in the Controller
When Cassatt Active Response assigns a node without a power controller to the virtual power control module, the Power and NIC components will have the same MAC address, indicating that Cassatt Active Response is using the boot NIC as the power interface, and the virtual power control module for power management. For example, if you click on an application node in the Controller, and select the Properties tab, you'll see the same MAC address for the Power and NIC components.
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High-level steps: setup, configuration, discovery
>This section describes the high-level steps for configuring application nodes with virtual power controllers for discovery. Detailed steps for setup and configuration of virtual power controllers are found in: Application Node Setup: Virtual Power Controllers.
The steps for setup, configuration, and discovery are:
- Using ethernet cable, connect the application nodes to the network switch.
- Configure the BIOS of application nodes to enable DHCP, PXE booting, boot order to "network" first, and any vendor-specific settings.
- Log in to the Controller.
- Create the virtual power controller: Discovered Pool > Power Controllers > New Power Controller. In the wizard, specify "Virtual" for Type.
If you are adding a number of virtual power controllers, you can save time by importing them in a comma-separated file. For details, see Configuration files.
- Verify that the virtual power controller has completed discovery.
- From the Power Controllers tab, select the virtual power controller link and Nodes > Associated Nodes > Add Node(s); add the nodes for the virtual power controller.
- Boot or reboot the node(s).
- After Cassatt Active Response discovers the nodes and displays them in the Nodes list, they are ready for inventory.
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When power cycling nodes may be necessary
Whenever Cassatt Active Response loses contact with a node attached to a virtual power controllers, the Controller issues an alert advising you to manually power cycle the node. After you power cycle the node and clear the failure, Cassatt Active Response resumes control of the node.
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