Cisco UCS C 210 - M2 Power Button Issue

[Wilson Samuel]

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone has experienced the inconvenience of the Cisco UCS 210 Power Button. (attached Data Sheet).

The Power button on the UCS 210, appears as an innocent power LED, and is protruding and very easily activated (even on my laptop I have to press Power Button for a few seconds to activate Hibernation or Shutdown).

I have had 1 incident with Cisco UCS 210 M2 Server, where myself and in another incident where a team mate accidentally turned the Server shutdown, in both cases while closing the KVM tray,  the fingers just brushed with the button and activated the system shutdown.

Interestingly the power button is “protruding” unlike the normal power buttons which is slightly in a “depression” where one has to use a pen point or pin to press the power button.

Fortunately in both cases the servers were in installation mode/lab mode and didn’t cause any business downtime.

I was curious if anyone has come up with an ingenious solution or Cisco has improvised it in the new UCS 210 Servers.

Kind Regards

Wilson Samuel

[Ben Rodriguez]

I had the great misfortune of a production server shutdown last week when two engineers were installing a print server in the RU above my primary CUCM/CUC UCS box.  In addition to the power button hanging out there the UCS front panel has several LED's that remain lit even when powered down so the guys in the server room didn't notice it go down.

I am currently looking into BIOS options in VMware to change the "quick button press to graceful shutdown" as currently configured to require a longer press.  I am also looking to find a piece of rack hardware to act as a "faceguard" for the UCS server. 

If anyone has a fix they have used I would be keen to hear it.

I will follow up with a post once I have found my solution.

Thanks,

Miles Green

[Wilson Samuel]

Hi Miles,

Sorry to hear that adventure.

I scoped around my entire organization and few folks at our end tried to find out any BIOS settings, and last they told me was there is NONE, that can stop that.

I moved on from that project after completion, hence I couldnt take it back to CSCO, however if you are fortunate enough being the end customer of the UCS C210s you may want to talk to your Cisco Rep and get a special remeady (BIOS update?) and offer a Nirvana to all of us out there..

All the Best!!

[chaausti]

I am not sure if it is even possible to disable this from the server  side with software, but you certainly cannot do this with settings. In  hardware, you could snip a single wire in the server to do this, but  that would void the warranty.

This is a function of the OS, and you can demonstrate  that by deleting /sbin/poweroff and the server will no longer shut down  with the shutfown command in vSphere client, the power button, or the  shut down button in the CIMC. Power off and hard reset in the CIMC, holding the power button, and of course pulling the plug will still allow it to hard power off.  I see different entries in the logs when I attempt to power off the  server with the file deleted,  while using the power button versus doing  it from vSphere client. This makes me thing it could be possible to  insert a script 'somewhere' that wither stops the shutdown, or copies  that file to the correct location. If I can get it to work I will let  you know, but still, editing things in ESXi is probably not a good idea  without making sure you will not cause new problems.

You  would have more success with contacting VMware about this feature. Also  if you get them to add this I would love to also have the option to  presss the power button and have all the VMs vMotion off the server  before shutting down. This would allow you to upgrade firmware without  having to pair up which server is which in vmware versus the CIMC and  hopefully lower the chance you accidentally power off the wrong server.

[Wilson Samuel]

"Power off and hard reset in the CIMC, holding the power button, and of course pulling the plug will still allow it to hard power off. I see different entries in the logs when I attempt to power off the server with the file deleted, while using the power button versus doing it from vSphere client. This makes me thing it could be possible to insert a script 'somewhere' that wither stops the shutdown, or copies that file to the correct location"

Just wanted to check with you, by deleting the /sbin/poweroff .' where exactly? In CIMC or in the Host OS or Guest OS?

Secondly deleting the file, does it disable the Power Shutdown of Host and all the the Guest OS by just "touching" or pressing (not holding) the power button?

Thank you..

[chaausti]

In the ESXi hypervisor.

It looks like the other person in this thread is the only one that said they were using VMware so sorry if you are running a different OS/Hypervisor.

In ESXi deleting files permanently is difficult since they return after a reboot. Please do not use this in production without VMware's okay and without finding out how to make it survive a reboot.

It disables it for touching only. Pressing and holding the power button will make it shut off no matter what you have running on the server.

Also I think it would be extremly unlikely that the power button is held for 7 seconds by accident. Cisco does sell racks with locking doors:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11518/index.html

added response to 2nd question

[Wilson Samuel]

Oh no worries.. I just wanted to make sure my thought.

I guess UCS supports only ESXi Hypervisor 4.x and vSphere V

So will it disable the Power Button?

[chaausti]

You can find official supported OS here:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10477/prod_technical_reference_list.html

We support both ESXi 4 and 5, but the latest update to ESXi 5 is waiting on some new drivers to pass certification testing before it is supported.

[Wilson Samuel]

Wow, that was helpful..

May be because I was looking only for the UC environment thats why I had got only the limited info about the Host OS support.

Thank you very much for correcting me (5 Stars)

[chaausti]

Also those docs need some explaining, when you look at adapter firmware compatibility information for any CNA, the version on the right is for NIC, even though the HBA drivers are right above the word nic. The line just wraps.

[chaausti]

Also, you may want to check on the settings for the power button on your laptop. Pressing the power button sould instantly kick off the process of a graceful shutdown by default, but I think in newer versions of windows the defaults are to do nothign or standby or something else.

You can find it in teh power options somewhere in control panel if you are running windows 7 on your laptop, and other versions of Winows may have this in a similar palce.

[Ben Rodriguez]

We made some changes to the CIMC and VSphere to make the server come back up with apps running after an accidental power down.  This was our fix for preventing a tap of the power button from making that necessary.

We got the cover from an Audio supply company, I had to drill out the rack ears to fit around the UCS lugs but it works well as a Butt Simple solution to the problem.

[mcvosi]

I have two C220 M3s and I just did the exact same thing in my datacenter.  I believe I was showing off our systems and was using big hand movements (LOL!) and must have bumped the power button on one of my servers.  It powered off immediately!

CISCO!  This needs to be addressed!  We need a configurable option in CIMC that allows us to turn off the buttons!

[padramas]

Hello,

Unlike C210 / M2 series, power button does not protrude on M3 ( C22 / C240 / C220 ) servers and are slightly depressed.

It also needs to be held down for few seconds before it initiates power off sequence.

I have submitted enhancement request CSCud71768 to add control knob functionality in CIMC for enabling / disabling power button.

Padma

[mcvosi]

I can tell you that I tried it again, and it didn't take but a quick tap on the button and the server powered off again.  It didn't require me to hold it in at all.

Thx for filing the feature request.