Design And Implementation Of An IPMI-based Baseboard Management Controller For Servers

With the increasing development of computer technology, whether business ororganizations have much number of multiple server equipment for the informationtechnology services, the server is the key equipment in communication network. Thereliable and effective of server management is becoming more and more important. Theexisting server management way has low efficiency, taking up server resources, not forremote management, group management. Therefore the design of a new kind of effectiveand reliable server management mode is the current urgent need.The Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) is designed based on the IPMI(Intelligent Platform Management Interface) specification. Through the message interfaceand I2C bus to communicate with the hardware on the server motherboard; through thesystem interface communication with the server host operating system and systemmanagement software, monitoring the operational status of the server; through thenetwork interface and the KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) technology to realize the remotemanagement of server. The embedded Web server is running on the BMC, it is convenientfor the users through the Web browser management the server. And the KVM clientsoftware in the form of Java applet embedded in a Web page for reference by the userdownload and run. The BMC integrated on a server motherboard, using ARM9microprocessor chip and transplantation of embedded Linux system, its operatingindependently of the server CPU and operating system, improved the reliability andstability of the server management.Achieve BMC based on the IPMI specification, making only a small number ofmanagers will be able to manage the hundreds of servers. This management mode can notonly reduce the cost of server management, and realizes the remote server management,state monitoring, to achieve the server in-band and out-of-band management, and it hashigh commercial value.