I sometimes hear my colleagues talking about IDRAC, IPMI and ILO, when restarting a server. It seems that those terms are often misused.
For instance, is there a difference between saying that you connect to IPMI and IDRAC?
If I well-understand, IDRAC and LILO are ipmi-based tools respectively implemented by Dell and HP, bringing new functionalities?
The SuperMicro X8SIE-F board has two dedicated LAN interfaces for the operating system (LAN1/2) and one dedicated LAN interface for IPMI.
Is it possible to configure IPMI to use one of the LAN1/2 interfaces, instead of the IPMI port? If so, what is the procedure?
We have a number of Supermicro machines with IPMI/BMC features. Some of these machines use an onboard BMC, while others use an add-on card.
We are looking into using sideband due to it's reduced costs and cabling requirements. However, some sideband details don't quite make sense.
Sideband requires one ethernet cable which is plugged into an ethernet port on the motherboard. This network port is then shared between the IPMI system and the operating system. From what I read in this Supermicro manual, "Use the same MAC address you are using for LAN1 for the SIMSO IPMI card". However, the IPMI must have a different IP address then the operating system.
How is it possible to have two devices (the operating system and the IPMI) which can listen and transmit on this same physical network port? When a packet arrives at the interface, how does the system determine if this packet is intended for the Operating System or for the IPMI system?
Are these packets handled by the CPU at all, using CPU interrupts? Can packets to the IPMI interface be viewed by the operating system?
I'm working on a remote server installation entirely through ILO (but this also applies to IPMI and VMWare console sessions). Due to the software application and environment, my access is restricted to a Windows server that I must access through RDP. Going from that system to the target server is accomplished via HP ILO2 or ILO3.
I'm trying to run a CentOS installation in an environment where I can't use a fully-automated deployment system. I'm doing this via text mode, but the keystrokes are repeating randomly and it's difficult to select the proper installation options. For example:
ks=http://all.yourbase.org/kickstart/ks.cfg
ends up looking like:
ks====httttttp://allll..yourbaseee.....org/kicksstart/ks.cccfg
I'm doing this using Microsoft's RDP client (on Mac and Windows). I've also noticed this before when running installations or doing remote work in nested sessions.
Is there a nice fix for this, or it it simply a function of the protocol(s)?
I've recently acquired a SuperMicro X8DTU-F motherboard, which has a built-in BMC, which basically runs the IPMI system. It turns out to be a small Linux system running on an ARM processor.
Unfortunately, it's running a boatload of software, much of which I don't need, and I don't have the ability to put it behind a firewall. However, I do want the IPMI functionality. Does anybody who has used one of these have some specific suggestions on how to secure the thing? It boots from what is essentially a ROM filesystem, and there don't even seem to be any hooks to turn off any of the various servers it runs....
I'd also be interested in how I might verify the list of names and passwords that can be used to access the system through all of the various services. The default is ADMIN / ADMIN, but none of the files in /conf or /etc have 'ADMIN' in them, which rather worries me. There are /conf/shadow and /conf/webshadow files, with mysterious 'test' IDs in them, which doesn't make me feel particularly comfortable either.