ibswinfo

Get information from unmanaged NVIDIA Infiniband switches.

Description

ibswinfo is a simple script to get status and monitoring information from unmanaged NVIDIA Infiniband switches.

NVIDIA Infiniband switches come in two flavors:

• managed switches have their own management controller, which allows monitoring fan speeds and temperatures, getting serial numbers, or updating firmwares over a variety of protocols (SSH, SNMP, HTTPs...)

• unmanaged switches are just that: unmanaged.

Some in-band management is possible for unmanaged switches with NVIDIA firmware tools, but the only way to get their status is via the LEDs on their chassis: they're either green (that's good), or red (that's bad). But you won't know unless you physically take a look at them, which makes it difficult to get notifications and alerts when problems occur.

ibswinfo helps solve this problem, by leveraging NVIDIA Firmware Tools (MFT) to allow sysadmins to get more information about their unmanaged Infiniband switches. It can be used to gather hardware vitals such as fan speeds or temperatures, and monitor the switches more closely.

As of version 0.6, ibswinfo also allows setting a user-friendly name (node description) for unmanaged switches. No more endless lists of identical and unhelpful switch names like "SwitchX - NVIDIA Networking", sysadmins can now customize each switch by setting a descriptive name, using their model, physical location, cluster name, etc. and make each switch more easily identifiable.

Installation

Dependencies

• NVIDIA Firmware Tools (MFT)

  >= 4.18.0

  >= 4.22.0 for switch name setting support

• infiniband-diags

• bash, coreutils, awk and sed

Preparation

ibswinfo can address switches by using the virtual devices created by MST, the NVIDIA Software Tools service, or by LID.

• to use the MST virtual devices, you can start the mst service and populate entries in /dev/mst with:

  # mst start
  # mst ib add
  

  Check that /dev/mst contains entries for your unmanaged switches (they should look like /dev/mst/SW_*), and you can run ibswinfo like this:

  # ./ibswinfo.sh -d /dev/mst/SW_model_node-desc_lid-0x0001
  

  or without the /dev/mst prefix, using the virtual device name directly:

  # ./ibswinfo.sh -d SW_model_node-desc_lid-0x0001
  

• to address switches by LID, starting the mst service is not required. You can get currently assigned LIDs with ibswitches, and run ibswinfo directly like this: ./ibswinfo.sh -d lid-16

Supported hardware

ibswinfo has been tested with the following unmanaged Infiniband switches:

• SB7790 Switch-IB (EDR) (known limitation: QSFP module temperatures reported as 0)
• SB7890 Switch-IB2 (EDR)
• QM8790 Quantum (HDR)

Limited support is also available for the managed version of those switches:

• SB7800 Switch-IB2 (EDR)
• QM8700 Quantum (HDR)

Note

If you find other working models, please feel free to open an issue and we'll complete the list._

Available information

• Node description (switch name)
• Part number, serial number
• PSID, GUID, firmware version
• Uptime
• Power supply information (status, consumption, part and serial numbers)
• Temperatures (including QSFP modules temp.)
• Fan speeds and status

Usage

Usage: ibswinfo.sh -d <device> [-T] [-o <inventory|vitals|status>] [-S <description>]

  global options:
    -d <device>             MST device path ("mst status" shows devices list)
                            or LID (eg. "-d lid-44")
  get info:
    -o <output_category>    Only display inventory|vitals|status information
    -T                      get QSFP modules temperature

  set info:
    -S <description>        set device description (63 char max.)

Default output

By default, ibswinfo presents all the available information for a switch in a table-like output:

# ./ibswinfo.sh -d <device>
=================================================
<node description>
=================================================
part number        | MQM8790-HS2F
serial number      | <redacted>
product name       | Jaguar Unmng IB 200
revision           | AC
ports              | 40
PSID               | MT_0000000063
GUID               | <redacted>
firmware version   | 27.2000.1886
-------------------------------------------------
uptime (d-h:m:s)   | 196d-07:05:40
-------------------------------------------------
PSU0 status        | OK
     P/N           | MTEF-PSF-AC-C
     S/N           | <redacted>
     DC power      | OK
     fan status    | OK
     power (W)     | 64
PSU1 status        | OK
     P/N           | MTEF-PSF-AC-C
     S/N           | <redacted>
     DC power      | OK
     fan status    | OK
     power (W)     | 47
-------------------------------------------------
temperature (C)    | 34
max temp (C)       | 41
-------------------------------------------------
fan status         | OK
fan#1 (rpm)        | 5426
fan#2 (rpm)        | 4746
fan#3 (rpm)        | 5426
fan#4 (rpm)        | 4798
fan#5 (rpm)        | 5426
fan#6 (rpm)        | 4815
fan#7 (rpm)        | 5382
fan#8 (rpm)        | 4868
fan#9 (rpm)        | 5471
-------------------------------------------------

Targeted outputs

Specific information can be targeted by choosing the appropriate output type: inventory, status or vitals.

This can be particularly useful to quickly get a switch's serial number, check its status to create alerts, or feed hardware metrics to a monitoring system. Targeted outputs are designed to be parsed for input to other tools.

For instance, to only get hardware vitals, including QSFP temperatures:

# ./ibswinfo -d <device> -o vitals -T
uptime (sec)       : 16982312
psu0.power (W)     : 92
psu1.power (W)     : 102
cur.temp (C)       : 73
max.temp (C)       : 80
QSFP#01.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#02.temp (C)   : 43
QSFP#03.temp (C)   : 43
QSFP#04.temp (C)   : 47
QSFP#05.temp (C)   : 42
QSFP#06.temp (C)   : 46
QSFP#07.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#08.temp (C)   : 46
QSFP#09.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#10.temp (C)   : 45
QSFP#11.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#12.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#13.temp (C)   : 48
QSFP#14.temp (C)   : 47
QSFP#15.temp (C)   : 51
QSFP#16.temp (C)   : 49
QSFP#17.temp (C)   : 53
QSFP#18.temp (C)   : 50
QSFP#19.temp (C)   : 52
QSFP#20.temp (C)   : 50
QSFP#21.temp (C)   : 51
QSFP#22.temp (C)   : 49
QSFP#23.temp (C)   : 47
QSFP#24.temp (C)   : 47
QSFP#25.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#26.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#27.temp (C)   : 42
QSFP#28.temp (C)   : 46
QSFP#29.temp (C)   : 41
QSFP#30.temp (C)   : 45
QSFP#31.temp (C)   : 40
QSFP#32.temp (C)   : 45
QSFP#33.temp (C)   : 39
QSFP#34.temp (C)   : 44
QSFP#35.temp (C)   : 37
QSFP#36.temp (C)   : 39
fan#1.speed (rpm)  : 6355
fan#2.speed (rpm)  : 5421
fan#3.speed (rpm)  : 6570
fan#4.speed (rpm)  : 5508
fan#5.speed (rpm)  : 6415
fan#6.speed (rpm)  : 5486
fan#7.speed (rpm)  : 6268
fan#8.speed (rpm)  : 5421

Or, to only get fans and power supplies' status:

# ./ibswinfo -d <device> -o status
psu0.status        : OK
psu0.dc            : OK
psu0.fan           : OK
psu1.status        : OK
psu1.dc            : OK
psu1.fan           : OK
fans               : OK

Setting switch names

requires ibswinfo >= 0.6 and MFT >= 4.22.0

Unmanaged switches' node descriptions can be customized, for easier management and better switch identification.

To update a switch's name to <new_node description>"

# ./ibswinfo -d <device> -S <new_node_description>
Device: <device>
  Current node description: <old_node_description>
  Set node description to : <new_node_description>
>> Confirm? (y/N) y
Setting new node description... done!

By default, unmanaged Infiniband switches all come with the same node description, based on their model, and it can quickly become cumbersome to determine which is which. Setting customized and descriptive switch names can help solve that problem and allow better identification of switches in the datacenter.

Before:

# ibswitches
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXa ports 37 "SwitchX - Mellanox Technologies" base port 0 lid 1 lmc 0
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXb ports 37 "SwitchX - Mellanox Technologies" base port 0 lid 2 lmc 0
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXc ports 37 "SwitchX - Mellanox Technologies" base port 0 lid 3 lmc 0
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXd ports 37 "SwitchX - Mellanox Technologies" base port 0 lid 4 lmc 0

After:

# ibswitches
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXa ports 37 "switch1 in rack1 U1" base port 0 lid 1 lmc 0
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXb ports 37 "switch2 in rack1 U3" base port 0 lid 2 lmc 0
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXc ports 37 "switch3 in rack1 U5" base port 0 lid 3 lmc 0
Switch  : 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXd ports 37 "switch4 in rack1 U7" base port 0 lid 4 lmc 0