User Guide

61
CHAPTER
6
Using IPMI
This chapter describes the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)
functionality and lists the supported IPMI commands. It includes the following
sections:
■ “About IPMI” on page 61.
■ “Supported IPMI 2.0 Commands” on page 63.
About IPMI
The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is an open-standard hardware
management interface specification that defines a specific way for embedded
management subsystems to communicate. IPMI information is exchanged through
the service processor (SP), an IPMI-compliant hardware component. Using low-level
hardware intelligence instead of the operating system has two main benefits: First,
this configuration allows for out-of-band server management, and second, the
operating system is not burdened with transporting system status data.
You can manage your server with the IPMI v.1.5/2.0 on your server or stand-alone
server, which runs a daemon to do the following:
■ Support low pin count (LPC) host interface in two modes:
■ KCS Mode (3 channels)
■ BT Mode (1 channel with 32 bytes of FIFO)
■ Support dedicated NIC or shared lights out management (LOM)
■ Support Serial-On-LAN (SOL)
■ Customize FRU/Sensor Data Record data (firmware independent)
■ Provide KVM over IP (remote access to the server)
■ Enable the user interface (UI) for hot key definitions (for example Ctrl-Alt-Del)