The Design And Implementation Of Automated Testing Tool Of BMC Based On Tcl/Tk

Many researchers are studying on automatic testing technology in recent years. Automatic testing technology can not only guarantee product quality, but also costs least. Automated testing in hardware field is essential to server vendors, because it can not only reduce costs, but also shorten the testing cycle, and speed up to face the market.IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) protocol became the standard of the server industry quickly after it was proposed by some big companies such as Intel and Dell in1998. This protocol describes everything about server products, including hardware standard and software standard. Testing server products is to test the implementation of IPMI protocol.This paper developed a new automated testing tool for server products based on IPMI protocol and an existing tool. The new tool has a high degree of automation, and it is easy to use. It can also restore the testing environment of the target machine when it is damaged. This tool mainly tests BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) which is the kernel part of IPMI. This paper’s work includes:· Studying IPMI protocol. It studied the architecture of IPMI protocol, communication model, baseboard management controller, sensor data records, field replaceable unit, all kinds of IPMI commands, and so on.· Designing and developing an automated testing tool for BMC based on Tcl/Tk language. This tool is mainly composed of five parts, including basic framework layer, messaging library layer, transporting layer, test module and tool module. Transport layer is implemented by C language, and other parts are implemented by Tcl/Tk language.· Developing lots of testing scripts to implement automated testing for hardware such as fan, power supply unit, hot-swap backplane.This tool has been applied for practical work, and statistics show that it can help reduce about one-third of the testing cycle.