Intel takes system management onboard

Intel has integrated OSA management building blocks into its Intel Desktop Utilities (IDU) application shipping in Q2 with next generation Intel desktop boards.

Intel has integrated OSA management building blocks into its Intel Desktop Utilities (IDU) application shipping in Q2 with next generation Intel desktop boards.

Using OSA's experience in "out of the box" platform manageability, IDU users can now access OSA-developed management features that combine monitoring, diagnostics, management and recovery capabilities into a single interface.

The IDU will ship with next generation Intel desktop motherboards expected in the first half of 2004 via existing Intel distribution channels.

IDU is a complete suite of desktop management utilities that offer hardware monitoring, testing and systems maintenance within a single interface.

Integrated with other third party applications, IDU is both versatile and intuitive, resulting in a productive management experience for even the most inexperienced user.

"This agreement demonstrates OSA's continuing leadership in matching market requirements for 'out-of-the-box' manageability", said Mark Lee, CEO and President of OSA Technologies.

"By unifying manageability of servers, workstations, desktops, and notebooks, OSA is offering vendors a cost effective way to add unique platform management features for their customers across product lines".

"The end user manageability experience is an important business driver for our Desktop Board business", said Joel Christensen, Director of Marketing, Intel Desktop Board Operations.

"By licensing OSA's management technology, Intel desktop boards are well positioned to take advantage of the growing need to pre-integrate management technologies that reduce overall total cost of ownership (TCO)".

OSA's building blocks that are integrated into IDU include platform health monitoring for specific components like fans, temperature sensors, power supply and hard drive.

If specific sensors have crossed pre-determined settings then alerts can be generated and displayed to the user.

For example, drive issues can be viewed - predicting drive stability.

By determining overall system health, problems can be averted resulting in higher desktop availability, thus reducing TCO.

Vendors typically offer minimal management features "out of the box".

Users are left to add and/or enhance manageability themselves using third party products and tools.

This costs users a great deal - first, the money to purchase and second, the time to install and configure.

Conversely, embedded management offers users features that are pre-integrated by the vendor.

For the user, this typically lowers their TCO as they exploit built-in features while adopting a more pro-active management approach.

The vendor enjoys better time to market with additional mindshare and customer loyalty for future sales.

The IPMI specification is an example of an embedded management specification that defines a common interface to how vendors monitor their system hardware and sensors (temperature, voltage, fan etc), control system components (power, blades, etc.), log important system events (chassis intrusion, CPU performance etc), to allow administrators to remotely manage and recover failed systems.

Many servers and high-end workstations will typically implement IPMI at the silicon level, with firmware running on a dedicated controller, or service processor.

On top of this firmware building block, additional software building blocks extend interoperability into other management domains - adding new features to support new and existing applications.

Pre-integrating embedded management combined with management applications and systems using open standard management building blocks represent the future of systems management.

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