Day 5: Status tab, hidden feature Drag’n Drop

In today’s blog post we will have a look at the new status tab of the Lights-Out 2.0 user interface. It doesn’t matter if you use the Lights-Out Management Console of the Dashboard. Finally, we will reveal a hidden feature which allows you to customize the appearance of the status tab.

The Status Tab

The status tab shows summary information in 6 different panels. These panels have different sizes, two long panels and four smaller panels.

The standard panel order from left to right is

• Status
• Recording
• Savings
• Monitoring
• License
• Calendar

Most panels have one or two bottom links. Use these links to open the settings, load your license or open the manual.

Now let’s have a look at each of the panels. For more information, please refer to the online manual.

Status

The status panel shows the current server status and the configured operation mode of Lights-Out: ON or OFF.  OFF means, Lights-Out does not control the server temporarily. If the server is disconnected the status shows ??. And if an action is soon to be executed, the action and the remaining time are displayed:

Recording

This panel shows the power events of your server. You see the number of events in the last 24 hours as well as a list of each event. You can see the source for wake-ups, executed tasks and power actions. Not all machines provide that level of detail. This depends on chip-set and drivers.

Hint: In the Lights-Out Management Console, you can click on the header RECORDING to directly open the runtime chart.

Savings

The saving panel shows you the amount of saved money and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The savings are calculated on the basis of electricity consumption and energy costs. A small chart shows a ratio: 100% = Server is always off, color is green. 0% = Server is always on, color is red.

Monitoring

The monitoring panel shows the number of monitored sources, the number of currently active sources, and a list of selected sources. In our sample we have 9 selected sources, starting with Backup activity and ending with Server Network Load. The last three sources are currently active. They are displayed with a bold blue font.

License

The license panel shows you the currently assigned license or allows you to buy and load a license. Since this is a topic of his own, we will not go into any further details.

Calendar

The calendar panel shows the number and summary of the next scheduled runtimes for today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

The hidden feature: Customizing the status tab

You may have already noticed that we have panels with a lot of content like the recording panel. Other panels depend on your configuration, like the monitoring panel or the calendar panel. And finally we have panels with less content like the license panel. What if we could determine the order of the panels?

That’s now possible. You can rearrange the panels with drag’n drop!

• Simply pick a panel at the blue header line.
• Drag it into the desired position.
• Drop it.

Both panels exchange their position.  Repeat it until you’re satisfied.

Summary

Today we looked at the new status tab. You learned which information is shown on each panel. You also learned how you can easily adopt the status tab to your personal preferences and needs.

Here you will find the complete list of all days of our step-by-step series.