HP Integrity rx4640 HP Management Base Installation and User's Guide for Linux - Page 32

Glossary BMC BT FPL FRU iLO IPMB IPMI KCS MP Open IPMI Baseboard Management Controller. The IPMI spec describes the BMC as the "heart of IPMI." It is an embedded microcontroller surrounded by memory, interfaces, and sensors. The entire collection can provide the various functions described in the specification. Block Transfer. One of the System Interfaces used to connect a BMC to a system CPU. BT is used in HP Integrity midrange and high-end systems. It transfers data in blocks and is much faster than KCS or SMIC. Forward Progress Log. An HP Integrity extension to IPMI, modelled on the SEL. It is a more verbose log of system activity that covers informational items, as well as everything that goes into the SEL. It is a circular log and never needs to be cleared. Field Replaceable Unit. Recognized as an industry-standard acronym, FRU is also tightly defined under IPMI specifications for data exchange. It describes any item or assembly that can be replaced outside of the factory. It may or may not require an HP-certified technician to do the replacement Integrated Lights Out. The product name for the management processor found on HP ProLiant servers. Recent firmware upgrades HP Integrity server legacy MP cards to Integrity iLO cards; it is this firmware that supplies RMCP. Intelligent Platform Management Bus. An I2C serial link between two intelligent IPMI controllers such as a BMC and an MP card. While this specification does exist in some HP Integrity servers, the implementation is hidden by hpbmc. Intelligent Platform Management Initiative. A specification owned by Intel which describes mechanisms and devices to completely off-load the task of managing system hardware from the primary CPU. This includes inventory management, entity relationships, sensor values, scanning and event management, inter-device and inter-chassis communication, and more. See the following Web site: http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi/. Keyboard Controller Style. One of the system interfaces used to connect a BMC to a system CPU. It is based on the protocol of the legacy Intel 805x keyboard controller chips. It has a low-pin count, which makes it simple and inexpensive, but its per-byte handshaking scheme makes it slow. KCS is used with the BMCs on HP Integrity entry-level servers. Management Processor. Generic term for processing, storage, sensor, and offline/remote access resources. This entity usually exists as separate cards or coprocessors. Early entry-level systems ship with an optional MP card, and all midrange and high-end systems always have an MP card. Current firmware upgrades the functionality to HP Integrity iLO cards because they now are on par with HP ProLiant servers. Open IPMI refers to an open-source project whose details can be seen at http:// openipmi.sourceforge.net/. It was started independently of the Linux kernel effort to bring IPMI to Linux. Since 2.4.23 and 2.6, the Open IPMI driver has been fully integrated into the Linux kernel at the following Web site: http://kernel.org/ The Open IPMI driver consists of three modules that present a stack. The middle layer, ipmi_msghandler, keeps track of multiple messages from multiple users and devices. The upper layer, ipmi_devintf, presents a character device file for user programs to use via ioctl. The bottom layer, ipmi_si, plugs the message handler into the three system interfaces (BT, KCS, or SMIC) of the system BMC. Historically the Open IPMI modules have been slightly out of sync with HP Integrity server BMC hardware. HP Management Base was initially released to provide compatible drivers, and now includes other utilities. Open IPMI is not needed for RMCP operations. The Open IMPI project also delivers a user library which is not used by any HP products. HP supplies its own proprietary library as part of HP Management Base. 32 Glossary