Information handling system physical component inventory to aid operational management through near field communication device interaction
NFC communications from a mobile phone to an information handling system initiates an inventory by a management controller of the information handling system. The inventory is provided to the mobile telephone with a second NFC communication so that an end user can see a visual depiction of the interior of the information handling system before opening the chassis of the system.
1. A system for replacing a first server information handling system with a second server information handling system, the system comprising:
a first server information handling system having:
a chassis;
at least one processor included in the chassis and operable to execute instructions to process information;
memory included in the chassis and interfaced with the at least one processor, the memory operable to store the instructions and information;
a management controller included in the chassis and operable to perform management functions including at least power up and power down of the at least one processor;
a near field communications (NFC) device interfaced with the management controller and operable to communicate with an external NFC device; and
an inventory module stored in non-transitory memory and having instructions configured to execute on the management controller, the inventory module configured to obtain a hardware configuration from hardware components included in the chassis and to communicate the hardware configuration through communication by the NFC device to an external NFC device, the hardware configuration including configuration settings of the hardware components; and
an external NFC device having instructions stored in non-transitory memory configured to execute on a processor associated with the external NFC device, the instructions configured to obtain the hardware configuration and the configuration settings from the inventory module, to store the hardware configuration and configuration settings on the external NFC device, and to communicate at least some of the configuration settings to the second server information handling system by NFC communication, the second server information handling system applying the configuration settings to replace the first server information handling system, the external NFC device further having wireless networking, the instructions configured to confirm implementation of the configuration settings at the second server information handling system by establishing a wireless networking interface with the second server information handling system after applying configuration settings provided by the NFC communications.
2. The system of claim 1 further comprising:
one or more identifiers stored in each of the hardware components, the one or more identifiers accessible by the inventory module;
wherein the inventory module queries the hardware components for the one or more identifiers in response to a request by the external NFC device.
3. The system of claim 2 wherein the hardware components comprise one or more processing components operable to execute firmware and the one or more identifiers include one or more firmware versions.
4. The system of claim 2 wherein the hardware components comprise storage devices.
5. The system of claim 2 wherein the one or more identifiers comprise one or more component part numbers retrieved from one or more components by the management controller.
6. The system of claim 1 wherein the inventory module further comprises instructions stored in the non-transitory memory, the instructions configured to execute on the management controller to obtain identifiers for external connections made by one or more of the components and to communicate the identifiers for external connections to the external NFC device.
7. The system of claim 1 further comprising a compatibility module associated with the external NFC device, the compatibility module stored in non-transitory memory and having instructions configured to execute on the processor to analyze the hardware configuration to determine compatibility of the second server information handling system to replace the first server information handling system.
8. The system of claim 1 further comprising a compatibility tool associated with the external NFC device and stored in non-transitory memory and having instructions configured to execute on the processor to extract predetermined information from the hardware configuration for configuration of a replacement information handling system.
9. The system of claim 1 further comprising:
a rack having plural slots to support server information handling systems; and
a chassis management controller disposed on the rack and operable to communicate with the management controller;
wherein the NFC device interfaces with the management controller through the chassis management controller to initiate an inventory by the inventory module running on the management controller in response to a request for an inventory from an external NFC device.
10. The system of claim 1 wherein the external NFC device comprises a mobile telephone.
11. The system of claim 1 wherein the hardware includes at least network communication resources and the hardware inventory configuration includes network addresses of the hardware inventory.
12. The system of claim 1 wherein the hardware includes at least processing components that run a virtualization manager for managing virtual machines running at the information handling system, and the hardware inventory includes configuration settings used by the virtualization manager.