HP Integrated Lights-Out
Integrated Lights-Out, or iLO, is a proprietary embedded server management technology by Hewlett-Packard which provides out-of-band management facilities. The physical connection is an Ethernet port that can be found on most ProLiant servers and microservers[1] of the 300 and above series.
iLO has similar functionality to the lights out management (LOM) technology offered by other vendors, for example Sun/Oracle's LOM port, Dell DRAC, the IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter and Cisco CIMC.
Features
iLO makes it possible to perform activities on an HP server from a remote location. The iLO card has a separate network connection (and its own IP address) to which one can connect via HTTPS. Possible options are:
- Reset the server (in case the server doesn't respond anymore via the network card)
- Power-up the server (possible to do this from a remote location, even if the server is shut down)
- Remote system console (in some cases however an 'Advanced license' may be required for some of the utilities to work)
- Mount remote physical CD/DVD drive or image (virtual media), depends on license.
- Access the server's Integrated Management Log (IML)
- Can be manipulated remotely through XML-based Remote Insight Board Command Language (RIBCL)
- Full command-line interface support through RS-232 port (shared with system), though the inability to enter function keys prevents certain operations
- SSH remote network access to iLO card supporting public key authentication, 1024 bit DSA key[2],[3] at least since iLO 3
- iLO Federation[4]
- Two factor authentication[5]
- Remote syslog[6], depends on license.
iLO provides some other utilities virtual power and a remote console. iLO is either embedded on the system board, or available as a PCI card.
Availability
iLO is embedded or available on some HP ProLiant and Integrity servers.
Prior to iLO, Compaq created several other lights out management products. The original was the Remote Insight Board (RIB), which was available as an EISA or PCI expansion card. RIB was replaced with RILOE (Remote Insight Light-Out Edition), which was only available for PCI. The original RILOE was replaced with RILOE II. HP stopped manufacturing RILOE II in 2006. The final firmware version for RILOE is 2.53(A) dated 9 Mar 2004 and for RILOE II is 1.21 dated 5 July 2006.
For some ProLiant 100 series servers there is a "Lights Out 100" option, which has more limited functionality. The LO100 is a traditional IPMI BMC, and does not share hardware or firmware with iLO.
There is also a version of iLO for HP Moonshot systems referred to as iLO Chassis Management which is often abbreviated as iLO CM. The Chassis Management version of iLO was derived from iLO 4.[7] As of June 2018 the most recent Chassis Manager Firmware available is version 1.56 which was released as part of the Moonshot Component Pack 2018.02.0.[8]
Although HP included iLO functionality in the ProLiant Gen8 MicroServer, they removed it from the Gen10 version.
Versions
There have been multiple generations of iLO, each generation noted by a single digit number ("iLO 2"). Some generations of iLO are segmented into different editions, based on what features are licensed.[9] iLO includes updatable firmware, for which HP periodically releases new versions.
Name | Servers | SW & FW | Latest Firmware | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
iLO | ProLiant G2, G3, G4, and G6 servers, model numbers under 300 | support | 1.96 released 30 April 2014 | |
iLO 2 | ProLiant G5 and G6 servers, model numbers 300 and higher | support | 2.33 released 30 March 2018 | |
iLO 3 | ProLiant G7 servers | support | 1.93 released 14 August 2020 | |
iLO 4 | ProLiant Gen8 and Gen9 servers | support | 2.73 released 13 February 2020 | |
iLO 5 | ProLiant Gen10 servers (some)[10] | support | 2.18 released 10 July 2020 |
Programming Interfaces
Several tools or APIs exist for interacting with HP iLO:
- Ansible: hponcfg module [11]
- Perl: Net::ILO
- Python: python-hpilo
- Ruby: ILOrb
- Powershell: HPE Scripting Tools for Windows Powershell
See also
References
- "HPE ProLiant MicroServer Generation 8 (Gen8)". Hewlett Packard Enterprise. 23 October 2017. Archived from the original (pdf) on 31 October 2017. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
- https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=a00018323en_us
- https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00045401en_us&docLocale=en_US
- https://community.hpe.com/t5/Servers-The-Right-Compute/5-Things-to-Know-about-iLO-Federation/ba-p/6950138#.XaWb2ecza0o
- https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00043385en_us&docLocale=en_US
- https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-a00026111en_us#N10F31
- http://h17007.www1.hpe.com/docs/enterprise/servers/moonshot/webhelp/content/s_The_difference_between_iLO_CM_and_HP_iLO_201303191456.html
- https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=a00044906en_us
- "HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) features comparison". HP ProLiant Servers. Hewlett Packard Enterprise. 26 April 2012. Archived from the original on 26 January 2012. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
- New iLO 5 for ProLiant Gen10 demo on YouTube
- https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/hponcfg_module.html#hponcfg-module