From Gigenet Articles
IPMI or Intelligent Platform Management Interface is a set of standards that are used to obtain information about various elements of a server relating to its health. This information is used by servers administrators to take corrective or preventive action.
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[edit] Importance of Monitoring
Having understood some of the various things that can go wrong with a server, it now becomes evident that one must keep a close watch on it all the time. Each element that is critical to a server can be reduced to a numerical value that can be easily measured. As soon as the critical parameters approach or cross critical values, action needs to be taken to bring that value back into line.
This monitoring needs to be done on a constant basis. Such an activity lends itself well to automation as a human can't always watch over the server.
[edit] Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)
IPMI is a standard protocol for interfacing with any given hardware. It has been widely adopted by the industry over the years and more than 150 manufacturers support it.
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[edit] Gigenet and IPMI
Gigenet is committed to providing complete ease of use and functionality to customers who have either colocated their servers with us or have leased a dedicated server. To this end, all servers that you lease from us are IPMI enabled and come with IPMI compatible hardware.
In addition, we provide dedicated access lines to the server through KVM over IP enabling you to work on the server as if you were right there next to it! This access is available even when the server is unresponsive, meaning that you can perform tasks like a cold reboot to a complete re installation of the OS. Even if your server is shut down, you can still monitor various parameters of its hardware.
These facilities put you in complete control of your server. You just need to manage it. Leave the hardware implementation to us!
[edit] Keyboard, Video, Mouse (KVM)
We saw earlier how IPMI can be used to obtain information about a remote server. However, the issue still remains as to the modalities of connecting to servers while away from them. To obtain a proper appreciation of the solution, we need to understand the various problems involved in remote monitoring. O07bn2 <a href="http://ckplnhxbxeur.com/">ckplnhxbxeur</a>, [url=http://ioxhkmjpnlbl.com/]ioxhkmjpnlbl[/url], [link=http://awqqodoapvpp.com/]awqqodoapvpp[/link], http://fwcpmdessczt.com/
[edit] KVM over IP
Earlier KVM solutions necessitated the console to be located a few feet away from a server. While this was a significant improvement, it was far from ideal. IT people are a greedy lot. They're never happy with what is. They always want to find ways to make their lives easier.
The need was felt to completely abstract the console from the vicinity of servers. This led the development of KVM over IP which meant that peripheral signals from a device like the keyboard could be sent over the Internet leading to complete remote manageability. KVM over IP is different from KVM analog. The latter meant that the console simply sent the peripheral signals to the servers via analog channels. As these signals rapidly degrade over distances, they prevented the console from being far away. With KVM over IP, the signals are digitized and can be sent over any distance without any loss in integrity.
You might say that this is nothing but remote management of a server which was always possible using software tools.
However, the KVM approach utilizes a hardware interface known as a KVM switch to send the signals to and from the server, ensuring that a software error or hung server will not interrupt the KVM communication.