Product category: Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: OSA Technologies | Subject: IPMI v2.0 firmware and software building blocks
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 20 February 2004

Firmware to support
latest IPMI specification

OSA Technologies is to support vendors with IPMI v2.0 firmware and software building blocks

The specification for IPMI v2.0 was unveiled at this week's Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. IPMI v2.0 building blocks from OSA will offer many benefits. For server and blade vendors, it provides a rapid and cost effective way to integrate IPMI-based monitoring, management, diagnosis and recovery features while still allowing for platform differentiation.

For IT users who purchase IPMI-enabled products, IPMI offers a way to increase their return on investment (ROI) and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by giving them a secure, centralised method to manage a server's complete health.

OSA will begin development of IPMI v2.0 firmware and software in Q1 2004.

During Q2 2004, vendors will be able to use OSA's IPMI v2.0 firmware and software building blocks to extend manageability of their product lines, from servers and blades to storage, workstations, networking and telecommunications equipment.

OSA estimates that already 30% of Intel processor-based servers shipping today have IPMI capabilities, and OSA expects this number to more than double by the end of 2004.

IPMI is instrumental in providing enterprise-class reliability, serviceability, usability and manageability.

IPMI lets users monitor the health of components such as the CPU, fan, voltage and temperature.

It maintains an inventory list of components and their operational status including, logging events to note malfunctions and sending alerts to notify appropriate persons.

IPMI also extends remote management and recovery.

Users have remote capabilities such as remote power up/down, hard reset, monitoring and management capabilities during all server states including, initial set-up, OS absent, boot, OS running or if the OS is hung.

By viewing and interacting with the boot console, users can recover quickly from server issues.

And, IPMI gives IT users the ability to set thresholds and receive alerts for failing components, enabling predictive failure capabilities.

No other specification offers such embedded manageability features.

"IPMI solutions deliver important features for server manageability, including remote resets and console redirection via the LAN", commented John Enck, Vice President and Research Director at Gartner.

"Furthermore, because IPMI technology is server-vendor neutral, IT users should view it as an emerging industry standard and begin asking for it when purchasing tower, rack-based, or blade servers".

IPMI v2.0 adds a number of new features to the existing specifications.

Enhanced Security - support for new authentication (SHA-1) and encryption (AES) mechanisms - reduces operational risk by supporting well-known mechanisms to secure remote operations.

Console redirection support remote viewing of the boot process and emergency management consoles.

This provides a standard way of remotely viewing server consoles, irrespective of vendor type, to diagnose and repair server-related issues.

Enhanced support for modular systems like blades reports status of blades during hot-swap, built-in redundancy by monitoring the secondary IPMI management bus - useful for Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) products and blade partitioning that restricts management to known interfaces - all increase reliability and security of Blade designs.

Purchased IPMI v1.5 or v2.0 systems offer compatibility - helping improve a customer's ROI.

"Using IPMI, OSA today gives many leading vendors the ability to provide their customers with remote management, monitoring, diagnostics and recovery at every phase of a system's lifecycle: pre-boot, OS-present, and OS-unresponsive", said Mark Lee, CEO and President of OSA Technologies.

"By adopting OSA's IPMI v2.0 building blocks during design time, vendors can add critical management features, while retaining the need to differentiate their products using our advanced development kits".

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