Intelligent Platform Management Interface
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The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification defines a set of common interfaces to a computer system which system administrators can use to monitor system health and manage the system. Several dozen companies support IPMI. Dell, HP, Intel Corporation and NEC Corporation announced IPMI v1.0 on 1998-09-16, v1.5 on 2001-03-01, and v2.0 on 2004-02-14.
IPMI operates independently of the operating system and allows administrators to manage a system remotely even in the absence of an operating system or the system management software, or even if the monitored system is powered off, but connected to a power source. IPMI can also function after the operating system has started, and offers enhanced features when used with system management software. IPMI prescribes only the structure and format of the interfaces as a standard, while detailed implementations may vary.
An implementation of IPMI version 1.5 and later can send out alerts via a direct serial connection, a local area network (LAN) or a serial over LAN (SOL) connection to a remote client. System administrators can then use IPMI messaging to query platform status, to review hardware logs, or to issue other requests from a remote console through the same connections. The standard also defines an alerting mechanism for the system to send a simple network management protocol (SNMP) platform event trap (PET).
The IPMI consists of a main controller called the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) and other satellite controllers. The satellite controllers within the same chassis connect to the BMC via the system interface called IPMB (Intelligent Platform Management Bus/Bridge) — an enhanced implementation of I²C (Inter-Integrated Circuit). The BMC connects to satellite controllers or another BMC in another chassis via IPMC (Intelligent Platform Management Chassis) bus/bridge. It may be managed with the Remote Management Control Protocol (RMCP), a specialized wire protocol defined by this specification.
A Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) holds the inventory (such as vendor id, manufacturer etc.) of potentially replaceable devices. A Sensor Data Records (SDR) repository provides the properties of the individual sensors present on the board. For example, the board may contain sensors for temperature, fan speed, and voltage.
[edit] See also
- Lights out management (LOM)
- Wired for Management (WfM)
[edit] External links
- Intel Website (includes specification download)
- OpenIPMI An IPMI client (open source)
- ipmitool Command-line interface to IPMI (open source)
- ipmiutil IPMI client-side utilities (open source)
- GNU Freeipmi IPMI libraries and tools (open source)
- coreIPM Project Firmware for IPMI baseboard management (open source)
- IPM430 CoreIPM firmware ported to TI MSP430. (open source)
[edit] Further reading
- Zhuo, Haihong; Yin, Jianwen; Rao, Anil V.. "Remote Management with the Baseboard Management Controller in Eighth-Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers" (pdf). Dell. http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps4q04-20040110-Zhuo.pdf. Retrieved on 2005-06-20.
