Hardware requirements for client nodes

Lab Management requires the ability to reliably reboot machines through powercycling. Therefore, access to some sort of Lights-Out Management (LOM) capability is required on all physical hosts in the Lab Management infrastructure.

Note: Virtual hosts automatically meet the LOM requirement because the two virtualization technologies that Lab Management supports--VMware Server and Solaris Zones--support these features in their management interfaces.
The type of machines that are suitable for use as Client Nodes must meet the following minimum requirements:
  • You are able to reboot the machines remotely using the built-in LOM feature or remotely-manageable Power Distribution Units (PDUs).
  • You are able to automate the machine installations (perform Pre-Execution Environment or PXE boots) over the network.
Lab Management currently supports the following machines:
  • HP ProLiant DL xxx series servers (such as DL320s, 360s, 380s, 460s, 585s) using RILOE, RILOE-II, iLO, or iLO-2
  • Sun Microsystems SPARC-based servers with ALOM
  • Server or desktop PCs including those from major manufacturers (Dell, HP, and IBM) with remotely-manageable PDUs (such as the APC 79 xx )

All Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)-based machines must be configured to perform PXE boots by default. The Lab Management application sets up appropriate PXE configuration files for these machines to either boot from their local disks or perform fresh O/S installations. For the Sun Microsystems SPARC-based servers, the Lab Management application issues appropriate boot commands when it performs remote installations or simple machine reboots.

Note: Lab Management can work with older hardware that has serial-based consoles without the LOM capability but Lab Management Professional Services must build custom scripts. In addition, the Lab Management Developer's Guide provides the procedures for creating your own LOM adapters if you have different out-of-band management capabilities on your servers.