How to find forgotten IP address of HP Onboard Administrator

 

How to find the forgotten/lost HP BladeSystem c-Class Onboard Administrator (OA) IP address.

To find the IP address of Onboard Administrator (both Active and Standby OA), you can use HP BladeSystem Insight Display which is available at the front of C7000 or C3000 enclosure. This is the easiest way to find the IP address any day. If you want to do in a hard way, then you may use a Serial cable and connect to the OA Serial port to find the IP address. You also have one more option available by using the DNS name of OA.

Find OA IP address using HP Insight Display:

HP Insight Display is a device which is available at the front of C7000 enclosure. You could use HP Insight Display to find the IP address of Onboard Administrator. HP Insight Display comes with UP, Down, Left and Right buttons to navigate. When the Insight Display is not in use, it will be turned OFF. Click on OK button at the Insight Display to turn ON the screen.

1. Access the HP Insight Display available at the front of C7000 or C3000 enclosure.

2. Use the arrow buttons and select Enclosure Info from the Insight Display (Shown below).
3. Use the OK button to select the option in Insight Display.

4. Under Enclosure Info, check the IP address listed next to Active OA (See screenshot).
5. This is the IP address of Active OA of your C-Class Enclosure.

Use this IP address to manage your HP C-class Enclosure. Enter the IP address in a web browser or use SSH to connect to OA. You should know the user name and password of the Onboard Administrator to login. This is one of the method to find IP address of C-Class Onboard Administrator. Now let us check the next method available to you.

Find OA IP address using Serial Console:

HP C7000 or C3000 Onboard Administrator is shipped with a Serial Port on it. It is a male DB9 serial port connector as shown above image. If you are using C3000, then the serial port is available at the front of the C3000 enclosure. We can use this Serial port to obtain the IP address of Onboard Administrator from C7000 and C3000 enclosure.

First you need to connect one end of Serial cable to the Onboard Administrator and other end to your Laptop. As my Laptop comes with a male serial port connector, I will use Female to Female Serial cable as shown below.

To connect using Serial port, we will use a utility called Putty. Putty is a simple tool which will allow us to communicate using Serial, SSH, Telnet etc. If you do not have Putty installed in your Laptop, you can download it from here. If you would like to know more about putty and how to use it with HP Onboard administrator, please read my article available here.

1. Connect the Serial cable from your Laptop to the serial port of HP Onboard Administrator.
2. Download and install Putty on your Laptop.
3. Launch Putty in your Laptop, the putty window will look like below.

4. In Putty, Select Serial and click on Open button.
5. You may receive a blank window as shown below.

6. Press Enter key, you will be prompted to enter User Name and Password of OA.

Note: Enter the OA User name and password and login to OA. You may also try using Administrator user account and the OA password provided on the tag of Onboard Administrator, this will work only if no one has changed the password.

7. Now you have successfully logged in to Serial Console of OA.

8. Now type the following command:

9. Let us see the output of SHOW OA NETWORK command.

10. To to get IP address of both Active and Standby Onboard Administrator, you can use the command:

SHOW OA NETWORK ALL command will display IP address, network mask, Gateway information both Onboard Administrator installed in your C-Class Enclosure. If you ever forget the IP address of OA, then you use any of above methods to find it.