Intelligent Platform Management Interface

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The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification defines a set of common interfaces to computer hardware and firmware 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 (OS) and allows administrators to manage a system remotely even in the absence of the OS or the system management software, or even if the monitored system is not powered on. IPMI can also function when the OS has started, and offers enhanced features when used with the system management software. IPMI gives only the structure and format of the interfaces as a standard, where the implementation may vary.

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 are connected to the BMC via the system interface called IPMB (Intelligent Platform Management Bus/Bridge). IPMB is 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 can be managed through the Remote Management Control Protocol (RMCP), a specialized wire protocol defined by this spec.

Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) holds the inventory (such as vendor id, manufacturer etc.) of the devices that are replaceable. A Sensor Data Records (SDR) repository provides the properties of the individual sensors present on the board. For example, sensors may be for temperature, fan speed, and voltage.

See also

• Lights out management (LOM)
• Wired for Management (WfM)
• RMCP

External links

• Intel Website (includes specification download)
• Avocent - What is IPMI?
• American Megatrends IPMI System Management
• 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 IPMI firmware with BMC and ATCA support (open source)
• The MergePoint 5224/5240 service processor (SP) managers

References

• Zhuo, Haihong; Yin, Jianwen; Rao, Anil V. Remote Management with the Baseboard Management Controller in Eighth-Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers. Dell. Retrieved on 2005-06-20..

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Last updated on Wednesday March 05, 2008 at 14:39:58 PST (GMT -0800)
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