IPMI support
What is IPMI?
IPMI stands for Intelligent Platform Management Interface, it is an industry standard composed of a set of specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system.
What is the purpose of using IPMI?
As this tools provides a much deeper control over the DDPs with advanced features, it must be used by the administrator only.
With IPMI, you are basically able to access the DDP the same way you could do it by plugging a keyboard and a monitor to it.
The most direct and logic advantage you can get out of this is that you don’t need to look for a monitor/keyboard whenever a crash occurs on the DDP. You can now check the status of the DDP in a matter of seconds from any of the client machines provided that they are connected to the same network.
For example if for some reason you cannot connect the DDP by SSH or even ping it, you would still be able to access the prompt and enter commands. Also as you have access to the DDP from the very moment it’s started up, you can access the BIOS features and even manually choose the OS boot partition in case of OS corruption.
The only condition in order to be able to use IPMI is that you connect the DDP IPMI dedicated ethernet port to the network.
You can easily recognize the IPMI ethernet port as it’s located just above the 2 USB ports as shown below.
The default settings for the IPMI ethernet port are the following:
- IP address: 172.16.5.99
- Subnet mask: 255.255.0.0
Once this port is connected, you can connect the Supermicro web interface by entering the IPMI port IP address into a web browser.
The screen below will appear, please login by entering the login/password. (default settings are ADMIN/ADMIN)
After the page below appears, please click on the “Remote control” button.
Then just click on the “Launch console” button so that the browser can download the management application.
After running the application, the prompt below should appear provided that the DDP is powered on.
This application can be executed on any machine as long as the IPMI port IP address is accessible.
Once you are connected to the DDP via the iKVM application, you can of course login and start entering commands. Many functions are included such as software and hardware reset, screen recording, macros…
You can get a full list of the supported functionalities by checking the specifications of iKVM.