HP Insight Control Power Management 7.0 User Guide

Use of management LAN
HP recommends that all communications between the Systems Insight Manager CMS and the
management processors be transmitted over a secure LAN isolated from the remainder of your
network. This ensures SNMP data collection (which is inherently insecure) cannot be
observed/monitored by other entities, and reduces the potential for external attacks on management
processors by untrusted or compromised systems.
Security properties for Data Center Power Control
In order to define and manage rules, you need to have access to the Data Center Power Control
Rules page. Access to this tool is controlled by standard Systems Insight Manager tool authorizations.
Alternatively, it is possible to define and manage rules if you have write access to the directory on
the CMS in which the rule definitions are stored. Access to this directory is controlled by standard
file system permissions of the underlying operating system. Systems Insight Manager is installed
with write access to this directory granted only to the administrator of the CMS.
In order to invoke a rule, you must either have access to the Data Center Power Control Rules page
or be on the list of Systems Insight Manager users allowed to run the rule. Authentication of the
user is performed through standard Systems Insight Manager authentication mechanisms (GUI,
SOAP, or CLI).
When running a rule, the rule acts with full authority (user "mxadmin") on all target systems,
regardless of the privileges of the user who invoked it. Rule execution therefore acts as a privilege
elevation mechanism. In particular:
• The Shutdown tool is implemented by calling SSA tools run under users, 'Administrator' for
the Windows target systems and 'root' for the Linux and HP-UX target systems, with appropriate
SSH credentials. For target systems that do not allow the root SSH login, use Systems Insight
Manager's privilege elevation tool. You can log-in to target systems using appropriate SSH
credentials stored in Systems Insight Manager along with any privilege elevation credentials
needed when the rule is executed.
For more information on SSH credentials and Systems Insight Manager's privilege elevation
tool, see the in Systems Insight Manager 5.x white paper and HP Systems Insight Manager
Installation and Configuration Guide for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and HP-UX at http://
h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/hpsim/infolibrary.html.
• The Power State tool is implemented by connections to the system iLOs that use the iLO
credentials stored in Systems Insight Manager.
• The Power Switch action is implemented with a mix of SSA tool invocations, as with Shutdown
above; and calls to the Power State action, as described above.
• The Run Script action runs scripts on the CMS as the Administrator/root user (that is, the user
running the Systems Insight Manager CMS process).
Power Regulator
HP Power Regulator for ProLiant
HP Power Regulator for ProLiant is a hardware feature that enables ProLiant servers to control
performance states (p-states) of the system processors. Insight Control power management monitors
and uses HP Power Regulator technology.
• CPU frequency: A lower p-state causes the CPU to operate at a lower frequency. For example,
a 3.773 GHz processor might operate at 3.0 GHz in a lower p-state.
• CPU voltage: A lower p-state causes the CPU to operate at a lower level of voltage. For
example, a CPU operating at 1.4v at maximum p-state might operate at 1.2v in the minimum
p-state.
12 Key concepts