Question : Problem: Heceta 2 system monitor

I have a 5 year old Intel ISP1100 1U rackmount web server.  It runs fine, but it is getting a bit old.  To that end, I have been wondering about the cooling fans, and if there was a way to monitor their operation without opening the case every other week.

In looking through the Technical Product Specification manual I found something that looks promising, however, I don't have a clue what it is talking about.  Something about Heceta 2 system monitor...but I don't have any idea how one actually can monitor the fans, temperature, etc. via this Heceta 2 system monitor.

I have included the entire text from the manual below.  Perhaps someone can explain what it is talking about and more importantly, what must I do to be able to monitor the fans and temperature within the server?

Thanks.

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Hardware Monitor

A Heceta 2 system monitor controller is provided on the serverboard. It monitors internal
temperature, voltage, fan speed and a temperature sensor located on the front panel.
Temperature is monitored through a sensor internal to the Heceta 2; the device indicates
the ambient temperature of the area of the board in which the Heceta 2 IC is located. The
Heceta 2 monitors +5V, +3.3V, +12V, and –12V, +1.5V, and the processor core voltage.
The Heceta 2 may be used to monitor the speed of a fan which has a tachometer output
connected to any of the five auxiliary fan connectors. The five system fans’ tachometer
outputs are multiplexed to the Heceta 2 device to allow individual monitoring. The
software through the PIIX4E chip controls the multiplexing of the fan tachometer outputs
to the Heceta 2 chip. The multiplexer control bits (FAN_MUXCTL0 and
FAN_MUXCTL1) are connected to the PIIX4E outputs GPO0 and GPO13, respectively.

Table 15 below shows the fan tachometer mapping.

Table 15: Fan tachometer MUX control mapping

FAN_MUXCTL0 FAN_MUXCTL1 Heceta FAN1_TACH
input

Heceta FAN2_TACH
input

0 0 Fan 1 (J35) Fan 4 (J38)
0 1 Fan 2 (J34) Fan 5 (J37)
1 0 Fan 3 (J33) NONE
1 1 NONE NONE

The Heceta 2 is set up and interfaced with through the PIIX4E’s SMBUS interface. Out of
band or absolute thresholds may be set for many of the monitored functions using the
SMBUS interface. Threshold faults are available by polling the Heceta 2 via the SMBUS
interface. The Heceta 2 updates its information approximately every 1 second.
For more details on programming and reading of Heceta 2, see Section 13.2 for
information specification.

Answer : Problem: Heceta 2 system monitor

The manual speaks of the "Heceta 2 IC", so this obviously involves some piece of hardware integrated in the server somehow.

This is not really my area of expertise. Could it be, since this sounds like it might be a proprietary hardware-based monitoring solution, that the appropriate software was originally included with the server? Any clue about this in the manual?

Intel's web site has a program called "Advanced Server Management (ASM)" for this machine, could that be what you need?

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=329&lang=eng

Otherwise, if these fans could be monitored through standard means, you could try programs such as Everest as suggested by Callandor (see link above), or SpeedFan: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

These programs can also report CPU and ambient temperatures and such, as supported by the hardware.

Anton