I love hardware.. old, new and obscure I love it all..

A good friend recently brought off eBay a IBM blade center E Chassis, came with two PSU's and the management module. You know.. we all have blade's and fiber channel arrays in our homes... :)

He also got the following later on :-

Why is this important to me? He knows how much I love hardware especially when its something odd like Cell Blades. He's given me the blade chassis the Intel xeon blade and two QS20's to get working for him, this I am very thankful for. Its a wonderful opportunity to get my head around Cell architecture and blade computing. So once again thank you.

Lets talk about the chassis first. First I need to get the management module back to defaults You can do this with a paper clip following steps taken from this guide To reset the entire management module (including user IDs and passwords) to the factory defaults do the following :

  1. Press and hold the reset button for 5 seconds.
  2. Release the button and wait 5 seconds.
  3. Press and hold the button for another 10 seconds.

After that the module will have the following IP 192.168.70.125. If you have a local DHCP server it will obtain a DHCP lease from that and ignore the internal Ip addres.  Default user name is "USERID" and default password is "PASSW0RD" (All caps and the number zero in password)

You should now be able to log into the web interface of the managment card. When Possible I like to have the latest Firmware on all things. You can find all updates firmware and such here

First we will update the Management Module The most current update for the management module is v1.22R (BRET86R) You should read the readme file the following is just a quick how to!

  1. Download the file named "ibm_fw_mm_bret86r_anyos_noarch.zip
  2. unzip the file, make sure you have the following two files :-  CNETRGUS.PKT and CNETMNUS.PKT
  3. You must update CNETRGUS.PKT first! So log into the management module and go to the firmeware updates, browse to the file "CNETRGUS.PKT" and hit update. Note if you've got two modules they both will get the update.
  4. Once that's complete you will need to restart the management module , click "Restart MM" and then "reset"
  5. Close off the browser window when asked and log into the module
  6. Go back into "Update MM firmware" and now browse for the file CNETMNUS.PKT click upload then continue.
  7. You'll need to restart you module again. Select "Restart MM" Close off the browser when asked and re log in.

That's it F/W is up to date . Note that the "Boot ROM" is no longer updated. We will also update the switch f/w. First we will reset the switch back to factory defaults then flash and ensure ports are online.

  1. Log into the Management module and select "I/O Module Tasks"
  2. Select "Configuration"  then select "advance Configuration" on the right hand window
  3. Select "restore Defaults"
  4. Go back to the "Configuration" page and set a static IP. User name and password will be  "USERID" and "PASSW0RD" (number zero in password)
  5. Download the latest switch F/W  [ 1.09 (00.00.97)]
  6. Unzip the file, make sure you have "ibmrun.097"
  7. Now log into the Switch.
  8. Select "Maintenance" Then "Using Browser" then select "Upgrade Firmware/Configuration"
  9. Browse to the file "ibmrun.097" then  select "Start" Click OK to continue and wait for reboot of switch module.
  10. Go back to the management module and select "I/O Module Tasks" then select "Admin/Power/Reset"
  11. Under  "I/O module Advance Setup. Ensure "external ports" is enabled. otherwise your switch will never work .

That's it. All up to date. Its much simpler to use the Web Interface for F/W updates as when you go in via SSH you need to make sure of a TFTP server. Out of Interest you can access the management module via Web(http and https) and SSH. You can also access the switch module via  Web and Telnet Command line rocks, good on IBM for giving us a command line you can use to admin your blade system. There will be more articles in regards to this blade chassi. Getting the QS20 and HS20 working.