What do you use IPMI for most of the time

[Haraikomono]

I have couple of Servers in my basemant serverfarm, and some offer ipmi with the supermicro boards,

since I've never made use of them, Id like to know of those who actually use them on a daily basis.

 

What do you usally use it for ? Since there seems to be lots of thing you could maintain from that ui

 

 

thanks in advance

[leadeater]

Daily usage certainly no, not really how IPMI gets utilized other than hardware monitoring but that's a little different situation.

 

IPMI/iLO/iDRAC/IMM etc typically get used during setup time to do remote KVM and mounting of virtual DVD drives to install OS or firmware updates etc. Then later remote KVM if there is an issue and the OS isn't reachable for some reason.

 

IPMI is basically a lifeline support tool.

[Haraikomono]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

IPMI is basically a lifeline support tool.

so like a red phone line connected directly to your system

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, Haraikomono said:

so like a red phone line connected directly to your system

Yep, sadly can't launch nukes though. Or maybe that is a good thing

[Windows7ge]

I use mine for mostly remote monitoring and KVM. Once in a while a server will act up and being able to just go to a IP on my LAN to troubleshoot/diagnose is a heck of a lot more convenient than going down to the server and physically plugging in a keyboard mouse and monitor.

[Haraikomono]

Ok Ive been working with IPMI now for 2 days. Its perfect.

Never knew that remote management can be so usefull

I just wonder whether its possible to use curl to send some commands to it, to automate stuff

[Ezel]

12 hours ago, Haraikomono said:

Ok Ive been working with IPMI now for 2 days. Its perfect.

Never knew that remote management can be so usefull

I just wonder whether its possible to use curl to send some commands to it, to automate stuff

Not sure about IPMI, but I can SSH into HP iLO to change settings and (if the OS is setup correctly) get a terminal of the running OS.

[NelizMastr]

I used to go into my server's iDRAC somewhat often to install firmware updates and to do the occasional reboot due to VMware PSOD's.

Nowadays, I rarely enter the iDRAC since my server is actually stable once I swapped the LSI HBA for a Dell PERC H330.

 

It's mostly useful for direct access to the console of the server when it runs headless.