Questions regarding HP C7000 and BL465c G7

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CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
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Hi,

First time Blade Enclosure user here. Have set up quite a few renderfarms and license servers before but they have all been based around 1U-2U racks. Being Creative (3D and VFX) primarily I still kinda know my ways around the technical side of production and infrastructure. Blade enclosures and blades are however a blind spot.

Brief background and current situation:

Got a C7000 with 16 x BL465c G7 and trying to investigate the current state of it all. It's been disconnected for a while and all parts were removed. I have connected PSUs, Fans, KVM and one more controller unit in the back which I am unsure of what it actually does… I connected 4 blades which were all recognised instantly. Showing amber light and appearing in OA. However, none of them wanted to boot saying “power delayed until VC profile is applied”. I went ahead and flashed the latest OA firmware going from 4.70 —> 4.97. After the system rebooted the blades were moved to "ok status" and turned green!

I thought, sweet lets connect a few more. I have now connected 8 blades. The new blades connected also said “power delayed until VC profile is applied”. I rebooted the OA and 2 of the 4 Blades were moved to “OK status”. The last 2 still wants a VC profile applied. As you can tell from this, I have pretty much no idea what I am doing. Randomly fixing things without actually knowing what solved it. I would be very grateful for guidance. I guess some (all) of you will say “try reading the manual”. I have, but I don’t know what I am looking for. It’s a wall of text!

Questions at the moment:

- Some Blades do report type of processor and amount of RAM in OA, others don’t. Hardware fault or misconfiguration?

- Some Blades show pretty weird/garbage names in OA. Hardware fault or misconfiguration?

- A couple of Blades still show “power delayed until VC profile is applied”. What is the cause of this? How do I fix it?

- How do I connect to individual Blades? They seem to be given an internal IP through iLO which I am unable to reach via network/OA

- Is there a desktop side software to manage the enclosure and/or individual blades?

- What the best way to deploy OS and software over multiple Blades? Preferably unattended.

Thanks in advance,

// Carl
 
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simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
Welcome to the wonderful world of the C7000. It's a complicated world. You've got into the OA (and updated the firmware - well done), so the next thing is to sort out the IP addressing before you go any further. You need 2 x IP for the OA, 8 x IP for the interconnects on the back, 16 x IP for the iLO for the blades and then whatever IP addresses for the OS on the blades.

Power off and remove all of the blades from the chassis.

Once you have the IP planned, you can configure the OA to allocate the IP addresses using DHCP. Click Enclosure settings/Enclosure Bay IP addressing/IPV4. From there, you need to configure the Device Bays and Interconnect Bays tabs. I think you'll be able to work it out. As long as you use sensible, contiguous IP address ranges, you can enter the details for the first Bay and then click the autofill button.

Then you need to configure the VC Flex. This will have an IP address now that you have configured the Interconnect bays. Click one of the VC Flex bays in the "picture" of the enclosure, click information. The IP address will be listed and the firmware version. Unless you have been provided with the login details, you will need the Administrator password. This is printed on the sticker physically located on the VC Flex modules, assuming your modules are in bays 1 and 2, you should get both passwords for your records (it's worth powering the whole chassis down if you need to remove both modules). Then once everything is back up and you can connect to and login to the VC Flex. Note you will need a browser with Flash enabled and available. I use Firefox 52.9 as that was the last that allowed Java as well. You may be wise resetting the VC Flex, which can be done fro the OA Enclosure Settings/Reset Factory Defaults/Clear VC Mode button.

Anyway, once you're logged into the VC Flex, you need to configure it. Many documents/books exist on configuring it some running into hundreds of pages. Anyway, you can choose the defaults for most of the options. It will take a little more effort to get it to pass traffic but let's leave that for another day. To start you just want to get it configured, then you can create some profiles and assign them to the bays. Once this is done the blades should start up without complaining about “power delayed until VC profile is applied” . It's worth upgrading the VC Flex firmware as well but that's complicated process on its own, happy to help when you get there.

To answer your other questions:

- Some Blades do report type of processor and amount of RAM in OA, others don’t. Hardware fault or misconfiguration? You will need to load the latest iLO and BIOS onto the blades. It will also depend if the blade has been powered on recently as that information is passed to the OA from the blade iLO which could be very old.

- Some Blades show pretty weird/garbage names in OA. Hardware fault or misconfiguration? Unfortunately your G7 blades have iLO3 which is very old and poor (but still usable). If the lithium battery has gone flat on the blade, the serial number/product ID get lost from the BIOS settings. Replacing the battery, starting the server, pressing F9 to enter the BIOS, you can re-enter this data

- A couple of Blades still show “power delayed until VC profile is applied”. What is the cause of this? How do I fix it? See above

- How do I connect to individual Blades? They seem to be given an internal IP through iLO which I am unable to reach via network/OA? See above

- Is there a desktop side software to manage the enclosure and/or individual blades? No, the OA is used to manage the chassis, the VC Flex has a web front end

- What the best way to deploy OS and software over multiple Blades? Preferably unattended. There are many ways, I have never used the official HP methods but PXE boot etc are available. It depends if you're going to run bare metal OS on each blade or load a hypervisor and virtualise

Oh, and it might be worth ordering 16 x CR2032 lithium cells.

Good luck, keep us posted.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
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1
Thank you @simoncorner for such an extensive answer. Almost gave up on this and thought about selling it "cheap". This definitely gave me new energy to give another shot at getting up and running. Hopefully I have some progress to report next week. This was much more helpful than the HPE support community.

Luckily the CR2032 are also used in the Sega Saturn. I have plenty spare ones! :)

Cheers,
// C
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
After my message I noticed that your OA module is in the standby slot, I would move it to the primary slot. I would also get a 2nd OA, they're not expensive on eBay. If the unit is quite old, it would be worth getting a replacement battery for the OA, it's a strange beast, M4T28-BR12SH1.
You're VC is almost definitely in the wrong slot. I would move it to slot 1 before starting. I seem to recall that if you move it after it's configured it loses the config. It's a little difficult to see but I think it's a "HP BLc VC Flex-10 Enet Module", it may not take the latest VCFlex firmware but see what version it's on at the moment.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
0
1
Hi,

Taking baby steps here but moving forward. @simoncorner Your previous answer has been so helpful!

I have gotten into the VC flex after setting up the ipv4 for the device bays. I have also managed to do the initial setup for VC flex but now struggling to get Flash player running to access the other options.

I have the latest Flash + Java. Running Firefox 52.9 under Win10. Attaching screenshots.

Cheers,
// C

IMG_3282.jpgIMG_3283.jpgIMG_3284.jpg
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
I think, that you have to use an older version of Flash. The newer versions had a time bomb installed so they self de-activate after the last day that Flash was supported. There are archives of the older versions available online. I've just tested it on a VM with Firefox 52.9.0ESR and flashplayer25_0r0_148_win.exe and it works ok. You may have to download fp_25.0.0.148_archive.zip to get that file.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
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1
Got it working! I have created and applied profiles through the wizard (everything at default). Managed to connect to a blade web admin via iLO. However cant seem to connect to a console. I see there are different consoles. .NET, Java, Java-applet. The only button that actually responds is the Java which wants to download and run a .jre. Once executed it crashes with "something, something exception"

Have considered buying a SUV cable to connect directly to individual blades. As a backup plan. :)

// C
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
Excellent progress.

That iLO3 console is a bit of a pain. .NET only works with Internet Explorer but you will need to add the URL/IP to the trusted sites. As long as you have Firefox 52.9 the Java console should work but again you'll need to add the URL/IP to the exception site list. There may be some other things to try. You may have to uninstall Java and use an older version. Sorry, I don't have any G7/iLO3 servers to test against.

You definitely need an SUV cable, even for newer blades. They're not expensive, about £12 here in the UK, 409496-001 I think
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
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I wouldn't be too concerned, you can certainly run Windows 10 on it, there aren't any OS restrictions that I'm aware of, just the junk that is Java and Flash.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
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Ok, cool. Still struggling to get java working in Firefox. IE 11 does not want to accept Flash 25. Says a more recent version is already built in. Would installing an older version of IE work?

This does not apply to my VC Flex model right?
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
You may need a different Flash installer, there are lots of different types, winax win_sa etc and one of them may be better suited for IE.
If you can get VC firmware 4.85 installed then you won't need to worry with Flash, I hadn't noticed they had removed the Flash. It's not terribly easy to tell which modules will take it because they all have such similar names. To update it, you'll need the vcsu tool, version 1.15.


and the firmware


Then install the tool to a Windows box and the command line syntax is a little awkward. Note, it's the OA IP, not the VCFlex IP

vcsu -a update -i OA_IP_address -u OA_Administrator_username -p OA_Administrator_password -vcu VC_Administrator_username -vcp VC_Administrator_password -l C:\temp\vcfwall485.bin -oe odd-even

but this works.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
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Unfortunately it looks like my model is not supported :( The VC Flex 10/10D is supported but mine is VC Flex 10 Enet.

But on a happier note, I got into a console using Java. The reason why it crashed earlier I believe was because I tried running it from a temp dir instead of downloading the .jar. Downloading it and then executing it works fine!

Everything in order I believe. HDD is empty. Just need to make proper install media. Or maybe just mount iso through "virtual drives". Poked around under Virtual Drives and seems like some features are locked because I don't have service/maintenace license?

Also have a SUV cable on its way. Feels like this beast is being resurrected. Might rename it to Lazarus.

IMG_3289.jpg
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
Ah, that's a shame. To be honest, once you've configured the VCFlex you will very rarely log in. The other option is to SSH into the VCFlex, everything can be configured there but I find it much easier to use the GUI and I'm a command line kinda person.

Not sure how much you know about these things but a bit like a rack mount server, there is a HPE RAID controller in the blade, when you power on the blade, you should get a banner about P410i Smart Array. Press F8 at this point will take you into the array configuration utility and then you can see if there is a logical drive. You will need to create one to present to the OS, these models don't present bare drives. You can create a RAID 0 or 1 array of the two drives or you could create 2 x RAID 0 arrays, each with one drive in if you absolutely NEED to have two disks presented to the OS. Depending on what you're doing, I would start with a RAID 1 mirror.

You should be able to mount the ISO as a virtual drive without the advanced licence. Even on the newer blades, the virtual media option isn't perfect so the SUV cable can come to the rescue in this case.

What are you planning on installing on the blades?
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
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1
Ok, sweet. These blades only have one hdd slot. I have some experience of setting up raid arrays. Configured a Dell DR6000 about a year ago. Hopefully I'll sort it out.

If the blades allow for it (drivers and such) I would prefer to install a Win 10 Pro. I plan on using the blades for rendering (2d/3d). From experience some of the applications don't run too well on server OS.

Cheers,
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
I'm pretty sure those blades have two disks slots. They're just behind one another instead of side by side :) Pop the lid off and have a look.

You should be able to install Windows 10 fine, you may struggle to get all of the device drivers loaded for things like the iLO but it should be OK.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
0
1
Ok, successfully installed Windows 10 on one blade. Ended up using the SUV cable. Only 3 devices showing missing drivers in device manager. 2 Ethernet devices and one System driver.

Looking at the HPE support page, all drivers are labeled for Windows Server. Will they install on a non-server edition? If not, any chance of finding Win 10 versions of those drivers? How can I identify the name of the components missing drivers?

From which port will the blades take ethernet from btw?

Cheers,
// C
 
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simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
Congratulations, more progress. Would I be correct in assuming you don't have network connectivity yet? If that's the case, the 2 ethernet devices will be the primary NICs. The system driver could be anything. If you open up device manager, start/run/devmgmt.msc , right click the unknown items, properties, Details tab, scroll to "device instance path" and let us have the VEN_XXXX and DEV_YYYY figures, or even just search for them, it should be pretty easy to work out what they are, then you can try getting the drivers.

You can always try the Windows Server versions of the drivers but the G7 pre-dates Server 2016 and that's probably the most likely one to be compatible.

One thing you can try, if you have a USB <> ethernet adapter, and you plug that in to the SUV cable. As long as Win10 recognises the adapter, you can connect that straight to your network and get the thing on the internet. From there, it may find the missing drivers automatically if you right click and "update drivers". The ethernet port built into the SUV cable doesn't work like that so don't bother trying that.
 

CarlFrost

New Member
Nov 17, 2021
19
0
1
Yes, your assumptions are correct, no network. Got myself a usb -> ethernet but unable to find drivers the easy way.

The ethernet controller is the NIC // ven_19a2 dev0700 // "Emulex HP NC550SFP Dual Port 10GbE Server Adapter"
The base system device is the iLO // ven103c dev3307 // "Integrated Lights-Out Standard Management Processor Support and Messaging"

The drivers found on HPE support obviously won't install, unsupported OS. I am unable to locate any Win 10 drivers from trusted/official sources.
This site claims they have a driver compatible with consumer windows but generally suspicious regarding sources like this.

Struggling to choose a way forward here. Either I keep digging for Win10 drivers or I choose to install Windows Server. Then again, the drivers offered from HPE is for Windows server 2012 and I need to install Win Server 2019. Can I assume that the missing drivers are bundled with windows server 2019? If not, you think it will be easier to find drivers for those devices if I am on a server OS?

Cheers,
// C

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