How to setup virtual iLO Remote Console

In the new release of HP Integrity Virtual Machines 4.30, HP added a new feature which allows you to access the guest console by logging into a specific IP address. This feature is called virtual iLO Remote Console and should be configured with hpvmmodify.

Looking at the guest status (hpvmstatus -p) the following is observed:

[Remote Console]
Remote Console not configured

This is how to configure the IP address of the virtual iLO Remote Console:

root@vmhost1:/# hpvmmodify -p 1 -K 192.168.11.193 -L 255.255.255.0

What the command does is configuring IP alias as could be seen in netstat:

lan0:110  1500 192.168.11.0    192.168.11.193  0                  0     0                  0     0

Running again hpvmstatus we see that the Remote Console is now configured:

[Remote Console]
Remote Console Ip Address:      192.168.11.193
Remote Console Net Mask:        255.255.255.0

Now about the users, by default the root user of the host is able login to all virtual consoles, although it’s not listed in following section:

[Authorized Administrators]
Oper Groups             :
Admin Groups            :
Oper Users              :
Admin Users             :

Let’s create a dedicated user for the first guest and then login:

root@vmhost1:/root# useradd -d /var/opt/hpvm/guests/vm01 -c ‘vm01 console’ adminvm1
root@vmhost1:/root# passwd adminvm1
root@vmhost1:/root# hpvmmodify -p 1 -u adminvm1:admin

Running status again we can see that the user is added to the administrators:

[Authorized Administrators]
Oper Groups             :
Admin Groups            :
Oper Users              :
Admin Users             : adminvm1

Let’s try now to login with our newly created user:
sve@angmar:~$ ssh adminvm1@192.168.11.193
Password:

vMP MAIN MENU

CO: Console
CM: Command Menu
CL: Console Log
SL: Show Event Logs
VM: Virtual Machine Menu
HE: Main Help Menu
X: Exit Connection

[vm01] vMP>

Voila, it’s working!

To enable access to the virtual iLO Remote Console through telnet (which by default is not supported) these two patches has to be applied on the host: PHCO_41595 and PHNE_41452. Two more considerations should be taken into consideration: The virtual iLO Remote Console’s SSH server host keys can change as it uses the host system’s SSH server host keys. If the guest is migrated to another system then these host keys will change. Another one is that guest administrator accounts are not migrated during Online VM Migration.