Which remote management technology?

[DaSh__]

 

Hi there,

I’m building a 1gbit/s home server for basic NAS, media streaming and webhosting capabilities and would like to be able control it remotely.

The difficulty I’m facing is choosing between a remote management technology where I may turn the computer on/off, reset and configure it. 

There are currently 3 that I found:

• AMD Dash
• Intel AMT
• IPMI

 

Now I got the following questions:

1. Are there any more remote management technologies?
2. As far as I understand, AMD Dash is only available to business customers, right? (also these cpus would have an individual price, I think)
3. To have Intel's AMT enabled do I require a cpu and motherboard that both support vPro?
4. Intel's AMT doesn't have a web interface, right?
5. May I use IPMI with all its features just through a PCIe card without any extra support by the mainboard and CPU? (HPE Dedicated iLO4)

 

[RollinLower]

Are you going to run Windows on this machine? Because windows has a built-in remote desktop environment.

 

The only problem is that it basically creates a virtual GPU every time you log on. So GPU intensive compute tasks might not like that.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, RollinLower said:

Are you going to run Windows on this machine? Because windows has a built-in remote desktop environment.

The technologies OP is talking about allow for one to access BIOS and everything remotely, not just the running OS, so what you're talking about isn't the same thing.

 

3 minutes ago, DaSh__ said:

• AMD Dash
• Intel AMT
• IPMI

All those require specific hardware-support.

[DaSh__]

 

3 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

Are you going to run Windows on this machine?

I gonna use a linux distro and also I don't want to control the OS remotely, as @WereCatf already mentioned.
 

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

All those require specific hardware-support.

I know right buw how exactly? That's why I asked specific questions...

[Jarsky]

4 hours ago, DaSh__ said:

 

1. Are there any more remote management technologies?

There are plenty of remote management technologies, but I think exclusively you're talking about OOB (Out-of-Band) management. 

IPMI and all its derivatives (ilo, idrac, cimc, etc...) are the primary OOB tool. 

4 hours ago, DaSh__ said:

1. As far as I understand, AMD Dash is only available to business customers, right? (also these cpus would have an individual price, I think)

Never actually tried it myself so not sure, but you do require a PRO series CPU, so the A series and Ryzen G series....I guess because APU's are more common in company deployments/mobile devices that would use this feature. 

4 hours ago, DaSh__ said:

1. To have Intel's AMT enabled do I require a cpu and motherboard that both support vPro?

Yes you need both CPU & Motherboard to support vPRO. AMT is a subset feature of vPro.

4 hours ago, DaSh__ said:

1. Intel's AMT doesn't have a web interface, right?

It does, per the documentation you can connect to http://<ip address>:16992  

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/boardsandkits/desktop-boards/945/D945GTP/D945GTP_AMT_QuickRefGuide01.pdf

4 hours ago, DaSh__ said:

1. May I use IPMI with all its features just through a PCIe card without any extra support by the mainboard and CPU? (HPE Dedicated iLO4)

 

No, IPMI is a seperate 'always on' management device that needs to be supported to allow interaction between it and the subsystem of the PC. Sometimes IPMI is a card, but its made specifically for that machine.

 

For machines that don't have IPMI, its common to use WoL for waking up a machine, but you can't power on a machine from being hard powered off. 

People have made KVM solutions that include a power wire to the power switch & reset headers as a junction, but not sure how long lived these solutions have been.