[Beowulf] non-proprietary IPMI card?

[Mark Hahn]

>> The Supermicro IPMI cards can share the eth0 port with the main gigabit
>> channel. The cards are powered up and on the network whenever power is
>> applied to the chassis. There is a bridge somewhere on the motherboard
>> which bridges between eth0 and the IPMI interface.

I would guess that the phy is just stolen by the IPMI, since sharing
the actual eth controller (registers, etc) would probably be too touchy.

> Wouldn't that sharing introduce a limitation, we have seen that we are
> not able to manage nodes remotley when the node has a kernel panic for
> example.

no - the IPMI wouldn't interact with the host OS, so if the latter is 
paniced (or turned off), it doesn't matter.