What is the difference between the ILOM System Event Log and the IPMI System Event Log?

Asset ID:	1-71-1446587.1
Update Date:	2012-04-04
Keywords:

Solution Type Technical Instruction Sure

Solution 1446587.1 : What is the difference between the ILOM System Event Log and the IPMI System Event Log?

Applies to:

Sun Fire X4270 M3 Server - Version: Not Applicable to Not Applicable - Release: N/A to N/A
Information in this document applies to any platform.
Applies To:

Document applies to any platform which supports ILOM version 3.x and above (X86 and SPARC T-series)

Goal

Purpose:

This article explains differences between the ILOM event logs and the IPMI event logs.

Solution

Description

Log files from the server platform can be generated in any of the following three ways:

1. From SP CLI by executing: show /SP/logs/event/list/
2. From ILOM GUI by going to: System Monitoring > Event Logs> Select All Events in the Filter
3. Remotely by executing: ipmitool -H <ILOM IP address> -U <user name> -P <password> sel list

IPMI System Event Log

The IPMI tool has been designed to keep the System Event Log (SEL) entries to a bare minimum. For instance, we have a number of IPMI "sensors" in the Sensor Data Repository. The tool provides us with the capability of assigning "thresholds" to some of these sensors. Every time a sensor threshold is crossed, an entry is made in the SEL. In newer platforms these thresholds are limited to those triggers that must drive system policy of some sort, usually error detection and state-changing events.

IPMI SEL can hold approximately 909 entries. This can be found by running 'ipmitool sel' command:

% ipmitool sel
    SEL Information
    Version          : 2.0 (v1.5, v2 compliant)
    Entries          : 909
    Free Space       : 0 bytes
    Percent Used     : 100%
    Last Add Time    : 03/09/2012 18:57:30
    Last Del Time    : 03/09/2012 18:57:30
    Overflow         : true
    Supported Cmds   : 'Reserve' 'Get Alloc Info'
    # of Alloc Units : 909
    Alloc Unit Size  : 18
    # Free Units     : 0
    Largest Free Blk : 0
    Max Record Size  : 18

ILOM System Event Log

The ILOM SEL is a superset of IPMI SEL which can hold approximately 2000 entries and includes audit logs. If we are monitoring the server status through the SP/ILOM interfaces such as CLI, IPMI, Web - the login/logout audit entries typically cause the ILOM SEL to start rolling faster than the IPMI SEL.
To counteract this, in ILOM ver 3.1, audit log entries were moved to their own log file. This should keep hardware events available longer in the ILOM event log.

To summarize, the engineering effort is to reduce the IPMI SEL entries to a bare minimum - maintaining only those events that are informational and actionable (that is control state or contribute to fault diagnosis). The ILOM system event logs accessible through the CLI or the Web interface should be the first aid to review what has been happening on the system.

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