[Beowulf] Re: Purdue Supercomputer

[Tim Cutts]

On 11 May 2008, at 8:45 am, Mark Hahn wrote:

>>> I find that with IPMI and console redirection, it's very rarely  
>>> necessary to
>>> care about where your nodes are, at least from a sysadmin  
>>> perspective.
>>
>> Speaking of IPMI, are there reasonable motherboards that incorporate
>> it right into the design at this point, or is it still mostly an add
>> on?
>
> bit of both - supermicro and tyan both rely on add-in cards, but
> HP (and probably some other vendors) have integrated IPMI onboard.
> I keep reading stuff from Intel and AMD about managability which  
> sounds tantalizingly like IPMI-like managability being integrated  
> into the chipset.
>
> I think the main issue is that ipmi needs a lan interface, though I  
> guess there are some examples of it sharing a port with the host.

There are also the issues that most vendors' IPMI implentations are  
broken, to at least some extent.  HP seem to be in the process of  
abandoning IPMI in favour of something else (whose name escapes me)

I guess one of the problems with IPMI is that it isn't in an  
individual hardware vendor's interest to support it properly.   If we  
really had a management interface that worked consistently across all  
hardware vendors, then it really wouldn't matter whose tin we bought  
(which they won't like) and there also wouldn't be any need to lock  
you into expensive vendor-specific management software like SIM (which  
they also wouldn't like).

I know I'm mainly mentioning HP here, but I don't really want to  
single them out for criticism - all the main vendors do the same  
thing.  Such are the realities of business.  Management systems are  
now one of the few things the main vendors can use to distinguish  
their products from those of the competition.

Tim


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