Having now worked with the Sun V40Z for more than a year, I can safely say that it is one of the best server platforms I have ever used. It has incredible lights out management, does a killer job of monitoring the platform environmentals, and can be configured to alert staff to problems it detects. All of these featured are made available through the service processor, which is an out-of-band device dedicated to monitoring and management. Since the service processor is constantly polling the platform environmentals, it knows immediately when a problem arises, and can be configured to send email or an SNMP trap with a detailed explanation of the issue that is detected.
To configure email notifications, you will first need to configure one or more DNS servers so the service processor can resolve the SMTP servers (you can also use IP addresses, but that is a maintenance headache). To configure two DNS servers, the service process “sp” command can be run with the “enable” option, the “dns” keyword and one or more DNS servers:
$ sp enable dns -n 192.168.1.1 -n 192.168.1.2
To view the configured DNS servers, the sp command can be run with the “get dns” option:
$ sp get dns
Name Server(s) Search Domain(s)
192.168.140.7,192.168.140.6
After DNS is configured and verified, the sp utility can be used to set an SMTP server. The following example sets the “From:” line that will be used in all outbound emails, and configures an SMTP server to route mail through:
$ sp set smtp server -f loopy@prefetch.net smtp.prefetch.net
To verify the SMTP settings, the sp utility can be run with the “get smtp server” option:
$ sp get smtp server
Server From Address
smtp.prefetch.net loopy@prefetch.net
Once the SMTP server(s) are configured, you will need to tell the service processor to generate email when an events occurs, and the address to send those events to. To generate email when informational, warning and critical events occur, the sp utility can be run with the “update smtp” option, the event notification level, and an address to send the alert to:
$ sp update smtp subscriber -n SMTP_Crit_Long -r
zematty@prefetch.net**
$ sp update smtp subscriber -n SMTP_Info_Long -r
zematty@prefetch.net**
$ sp update smtp subscriber -n SMTP_Warn_Long -r
zematty@prefetch.net**
Now each time an event occurs, the service processor will send a message with details on the event that occurred. If you want to generate a test event to make sure the SP email event notification facility is configured correctly, the sp utility can be run with the “create test events” options:
$ sp create test events
Tis all about getting notified when ze hardware fails.