Description
This incidence indicates the OSA/Avocent IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) driver has failed, stopped, or is disabled on a Windows system.
The OSA/Avocent IPMI driver communicates with the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) on many IBM systems. The BMC is an IPMI compliant service processor. IPMI is one of the leading industry standards for server platform management.
Service processors, sometimes also called management controllers or management processors, are used not only to monitor system health but also to manage systems. IBM RSA-II (Remote Supervisor Adapter II) is another kind of service processor that IBM offers. Often, these management controllers provide out-of-band management capability, so systems can be managed remotely even if the OS is absent or the system is not fully powered on.
The OSA/Avocent IPMI driver is a required component for the OS or applications to communicate with the BMC and access its platform management functionality. Many IBM platform management tools require this driver to be in place. Such tools include ASU (Advanced Settings Utility), DSA (Dynamic System Analysis), ESA (Electronic Service Agent), Director Agent, and Hardware Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
See the "Additional information" section below on troubleshooting issues with OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver, the BMC, or both.
Causes
The OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver has failed due to unexpected conditions experienced in the device driver or the BMC. The failure might be caused by a problem with another malfunctioning driver or other hardware, or by a problem in the OS itself.
Or, the BMC device instance managed by the driver might have been accidentally disabled or stopped by an administrator.
Note that on Windows Server 2008 or later, the native Microsoft IPMI driver is used in place of the OSA/Avocent IPMI driver. The OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver should be uninstalled and should not be installed on Windows Server 2008 or later.
Implications
When the OSA IPMI device driver fails or is stopped, most of the hardware component instrumentations performed by the BMC will no longer be available for systems management software (for example, IBM Director, or Microsoft Operations Manager).
However, if an RSA-II (Remote Supervisor Adapter II) and its software stack are properly installed on the system, systems management software supported by IBM Director Agent might still be able to perform platform management through RSA-II. However, you should have the issues diagnosed and resolved so that other IBM platform management tools can take full advantage of the built-in management functionality that comes with IBM systems.
Resolutions
1. Make sure that OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver is enabled and started. The IPMI device controlled by the OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver is listed under "System devices" in the Device Manager, with the name of "Avocent IPMI driver". To see the device, you might need to make the Device Manager show all the hidden devices. Consult Microsoft's documentation on how to show hidden devices and how to enable and start a device driver.
2. Follow the steps provided in the "Additional information" section below to collect information about how to troubleshoot issues with the OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver, the BMC, or both. You might need to install the latest driver, firmware, or both to resolve the issue. To download the latest driver and the BMC firmware, see the "Additional information" section below.
3. Review the Windows Event Log for the system to see whether other system-level errors might have caused the driver to fail. Consult Microsoft's documentation on how to troubleshoot Windows device driver problems.
Additional information
To download the latest OSA IPMI device driver or the latest BMC firmware, visit the "IBM System x support search" Web site, select "Download" for "Task", and then select the "Product Family", "Machine type", and "Operating system" values of interest. Then, for the latest device driver, select "OSA IPMI" in the "Refine results" list; for the latest BMC firmware, select "Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)" instead. In the result list, click the applicable link. For BladeCenter x86 blade servers, visit the IBM BladeCenter support search Web site and follow similar steps.
To troubleshoot issues with the OSA IPMI device driver or the BMC, visit the "IBM System x support search" Web site, select "Troubleshooting" for "Task", and then select the "Product Family", "Machine type", and "Operating system" values of interest. Then, in "Refine results" select either "OSA IPMI" or "Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)". In the result list, follow the applicable links, and then read through the articles and follow the applicable instructions. For BladeCenter x86 blade servers, visit the IBM BladeCenter support search Web site and follow similar steps.
For the compatibility matrix between IBM System x systems and Windows, consult IBM ServerProven System x and xSeries compatibility - Microsoft. For BladeCenter x86 blade servers, consult IBM ServerProven Compatibility for BladeCenter products.
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