Operating instructions

40 Cisco Systems Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module
5.1.5 Cisco Systems Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module Help
Resources
When accessing the Help Resources menu (Figure 5-25), you are provided links to other help
resources and product documentation.
Figure 5-25 Cisco Systems Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module Help Resources
5.2 Systems management considerations
In this section, we look at some of the system management functions of the Cisco Systems
IGESM as well as system management tools. For a more detailed discussion of management
path considerations for the IGESM, see 5.3, “In-depth management path discussions” on
page 55.
5.2.1 Out-of-band management definition
It is common to provide a (physically) separate management interface for all of the devices
and to carry only management traffic. This is referred to as
out-of-band management and is
sometimes a separate Ethernet connection or a whole different physical connection (such as
the console port). See 5.3.4, “Considerations: Using the Management Module uplink to
manage the IGESM” on page 59 for details about configuring the BladeCenter for
Ethernet-based out-of-band management via the Management Module.
In addition to managing the Ethernet switches, all of the blade servers in the BladeCenter can
be managed by using the browser and logging on to the Management Module. Within the
BladeCenter, the server management traffic (typically server console access) flows through a
different bus, the I2C bus, which is kept separate from the BladeCenter data traffic bus.
The BladeCenter comes with at least one Management Module, and it supports an external
Ethernet interface, which is used by default to manage the blade servers, Ethernet switches,
Important: Properly managing the IGESMs in the BladeCenter actually also requires
proper management of the Management Module within the BladeCenter. In other words, it
is virtually impossible to successfully deploy the IGESM if you do not understand and
properly configure certain settings in the Management Module, as well as the necessary
IGESM configurations.