[sdnog] Server Management port

[Philip Paeps]

On 2016-08-26 13:31:05 (+0200), Jaco Engelbrecht 
<bje at serendipity.org.za> wrote:
> On 25 Aug 2016, at 17:22, wadah khalid <engwada7 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've always seen a port on hp servers called (ilo) , I made a quick 
>> search and I found that they call it management port , for server 
>> management I guess ..
>>
>> What's the technology behind management ports in different kinds of 
>> servers ,
>> I mean I used to manage my servers remotely through remote access 
>> applications why do I need such a port on my server ..
>
> The ILO (integrated lights out) (HP specific term) or DRAC (Dell 
> Remote Access Controller) (Dell specific) is an out-of-band management 
> platform - I wanted to try compare it to a console port on a router, 
> but it’s a bit more feature rich - but at the end of the day 
> connecting to a (remote) console port on a router is as if you were 
> local to the console with a laptop - with this it’s the same:

I think this is the salient part: it allows you to get access to your 
server if you've managed to break enough of the operating system / 
network configuration that you can no longer log in remotely.

It lets you get your system running again without having to spend 
quality time in a noisy and cold data centre on the other side of the 
planet.

> "The controller has its own processor, memory, network connection, and 
> access to the system bus. Key features include power management, 
> virtual media access and remote console capabilities, all available 
> through a supported web browser or command-line interface. This gives 
> system administrators the ability to configure a machine as if they 
> were sitting at the local console (terminal).” [1]

Both HP iLO and Dell DRAC support IPMI, which is a more or less 
"standard" (as these things go in the peecee world) interface for remote 
out of band management.  I've successfully managed to use the open 
source "ipmitool" to rescue servers from botched upgrades and fat 
fingers on every HP and Dell machine I've had to rescue.

> ILO and DRAC options are typically very expensive, but well worth 
> having access to this kind of technology if you operate serves on the 
> other side of the world.

The "enterprise management" features and the Java keyboard/monitor 
voodoo are moderately expensive.  The basic feature set (IPMI 
serial-on-lan, remote power cycle) is reasonably affordable.  Even 
entry-level HP microservers have the basic iLO included by default.

> I’ve recently switched to using Lantronix SpiderDuo's [2].

Do they do IPv6 yet? ;-)

Philip

-- 
Philip Paeps
Senior Reality Engineer
Ministry of Information