Enterprise systems are a complex collection of hardware platforms - servers, networks and storage - plus the operating system and applications that together deliver the services required by the various departments of today’s enterprises. Management of those systems is no longer a simple task of connecting to a server and monitoring the progress of the application. The application can be distributed across multiple servers and with many of those servers geographically remote from each other the management task has itself taken on enormous complexity.

However, complexity at the application level must not be allowed to mask the management requirements that are imposed down at the individual server level. Each server is an entity in its own right and the components, processor, networking cards, storage etc must be managed and monitored continuously. Similar to the way the application world has progressed from monolithic to distributed, systems management has taken on a distributed form. Intelligent Platform Management Interface is the standard in the server world that defines how the lower component levels of distributed servers are managed and monitored remotely.

Course Topics:

This course starts by providing an architectural view of the principles and elements that make up the IPM Interface - the specification defines a black box with a set of precisely defined interfaces that enable remote management consoles to talk to the platform management intelligence.

The course then takes a more in depth look at the major components of the IPM Interface:

• The managed environment - a baseboard management controller that manages
  • sensors ( temperature, chassis, processor, memory, IO cards, PCI subsystem etc) ,
  • Sensor Data Records,
  • events and Platform Event Filters, FRUs
  • and the collation of that information into the System Event Log
• Remote management consoles and their use of the IPM Interfaces:
  • LAN,
  • Serial,
  • Serial over LAN,
• Security aspects in today’s Internet world, Firmware Firewall etc
• The local server - activities before, during and after system boot, interactions with the local OS and applications etc.
• Interactions with the various Systems Management Environments that are available today – particular emphasis is placed on the use of the OpenIPMI toolkit (Note that OpenIPMI, an open source project, was chosen because source code can be examined as necessary)

The IPMI enhancements defined in the AdvancedTCATM specification can be discussed as necessary. In such cases an additional day is required to cover the extra material.

Course Objectives:

To provide students with an in depth understanding of:

• The workings of a Baseboard Management Controller
• The interactions with Systems Management Environments, both local and remote.

Course Prerequisites:

Students are expected to have some knowledge of low level computer hardware and particularly the use of embedded systems.

Who Should Attend?

This two day course is designed to provide a detailed understanding of the IPMI as it relates to board, platform, and system design issues as well as to BIOS, ACPI, device driver and application programmers, and test and de-bug issues. It is appropriate for design, debug, validation, field engineers, and managers who need a good understanding of the hardware/software capabilities and the disciplines required for the successful introduction and support of IPMI in devices or systems.