fence_ipmilan powers off a node but still returns a failure when using iLO version 3 or 4 in RHEL 5, 6, or 7

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 With High Availability Addon
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 With High Availability Addon
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 With High Availability Addon
  • One or more cluster nodes with an HP iLO management card with version 3 or 4 firmware

Issue

  • How do you configure an HP iLO3 fence device in /etc/cluster/cluster.conf?
  • fence_ipmilan fails when using an HP iLO3 device
  • fence_ipmilan powers off a node, but still returns a failure

Resolution

When using the fence agent fence_ipmilan on an HP ILO fence device the power_wait option must be configured to a value of at least 4 and lanplus must be enabled. The power_wait option sets a timeout value to wait X seconds after an on or off action triggered. The fence device declaration would look similar to the following for a cman cluster, in /etc/cluster/cluster.conf:

  <fencedevice agent="fence_ipmilan" ipaddr="192.168.1.10" login="fenceuser" name="fence-node1" passwd="***" lanplus="1" power_wait="4"/>

Or when configuring the fence_ipmilan agent for use with pacemaker and stonith-ng:

# pcs stonith create fence-node1 fence_ipmilan ipaddr="192.168.1.10" login="fenceuser" lanplus="1" power_wait="4" pcmk_host_list="node1.example.com"

Root Cause

  • The fencing agent which supports HP iLO3 or HP iLO 4 devices is fence_ipmilan. The status check on the device needs to wait a few seconds to get the correct power status or an incorrect power status will be returned after a poweroff or reboot.

Diagnostic Steps

  • Verify the fencing device version in use. Make sure that you indicate the exact version, since there are different iterations of fencing devices. For example there are multiple versions of HP iLO devices (iLO, iLO2, iLO3, iLO4) which each have their own firmware revision history.
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