IPMI Power Supply Sensor

The IPMI specification provides for power supplies an own IPMI sensor type Power Supply. Servers whose motherboards and power supplies meet the PMBus specification can provide information about the cause of the problem via such an IPMI power supply sensor in the event of problems with a power supply.

Power supply sensor

A power supply sensor can have the following events according to IPMI specification:

• Presence detected
• Power Supply Failure detected
• Predictive Failure
• Power Supply input lost (AC/DC)
• Power Supply input lost or out-of-range
• Power Supply input out-of-range, but present
• Configuration error

If the event Power Supply input lost (AC/DC) is also displayed when a power supply unit error message appears, the power supply to this power supply unit is probably interrupted (e.g., the power cable has been disconnected).

Example of an interrupted power supply

Display of error in the IPMI webinterface.

The following example shows a 2HE Intel Dual-CPU SC216 Server (in this test with a X9SCM-iiF mainboard with IPMI firmware 2.24). The power cable of the first (above) power supply was deducted here. The following issue shows the feedback of FreeIPMI:

user@admin-pc:~$ ipmi-sensors -h 10.1.102.141 -u **** -p **** -l USER
ID   | Name            | Type              | Reading    | Units | Event
4    | System Temp     | Temperature       | 28.00      | C     | 'OK'
71   | Peripheral Temp | Temperature       | 33.00      | C     | 'OK'
138  | CPU Temp        | OEM Reserved      | N/A        | N/A   | 'OEM Event = 0000h'
205  | FAN 1           | Fan               | 2700.00    | RPM   | 'OK'
272  | FAN 2           | Fan               | N/A        | RPM   | N/A
339  | FAN 3           | Fan               | 2700.00    | RPM   | 'OK'
406  | FAN 4           | Fan               | 975.00     | RPM   | 'OK'
473  | FAN A           | Fan               | 2700.00    | RPM   | 'OK'
540  | Vcore           | Voltage           | 0.74       | V     | 'OK'
607  | 3.3VCC          | Voltage           | 3.39       | V     | 'OK'
674  | 12V             | Voltage           | 12.14      | V     | 'OK'
741  | VDIMM           | Voltage           | 1.51       | V     | 'OK'
808  | 5VCC            | Voltage           | 5.02       | V     | 'OK'
875  | -12V            | Voltage           | -12.09     | V     | 'OK'
942  | VBAT            | Voltage           | 3.09       | V     | 'OK'
1009 | VSB             | Voltage           | 3.33       | V     | 'OK'
1076 | AVCC            | Voltage           | 3.39       | V     | 'OK'
1143 | Chassis Intru   | Physical Security | N/A        | N/A   | 'OK'
1210 | PS1 Status      | Power Supply      | N/A        | N/A   | 'Presence detected' 'Power Supply Failure detected' 'Power Supply input lost (AC/DC)'
1746 | PS2 Status      | Power Supply      | N/A        | N/A   | 'Presence detected'

With the option -vv, the FreeIPMI ipmi-sensor command shows more detailed information:

user@admin-pc:~$ ipmi-sensors -h 10.1.102.141 -u **** -p **** -r 1210 -vvv 
Record ID: 1210
Record Type: Full Sensor Record (1h)
ID String: PS1 Status
Sensor Type: Power Supply (8h)
Sensor Number: 200
IPMB Slave Address: 10h
Sensor Owner ID: 20h
Sensor Owner LUN: 0h
Channel Number: 0h
Entity ID: power supply (10)
Entity Instance: 1
Entity Instance Type: Physical Entity
Event/Reading Type Code: 6Fh
Accuracy: 0.000000%
Sensor Direction: Unspecified
Positive Hysteresis: N/A
Negative Hysteresis: N/A
Assertion Event Enabled: 'Power Supply Failure detected'
Assertion Event Enabled: 'Predictive Failure'
Deassertion Event Enabled: 'Power Supply Failure detected'
Deassertion Event Enabled: 'Predictive Failure'
Sensor Event: 'Presence detected'
Sensor Event: 'Power Supply Failure detected'
Sensor Event: 'Power Supply input lost (AC/DC)'

More information

• Intel Node Manager power measurement using FreeIPMI