IPMI for remote management

I've been recently playing around with IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) which was developed by Intel and implemented in Dell, HP, Supermicro and a variety of other Intel servers.

In my lab, I am using it to manage a Linux Server, and here is how I configured it.

1.- Loading IPMI kernel modules

I added ipmi_si and ipmi_devintf to my /etc/modules so those can load at startup, but also loaded those manually.

 root@donkey:~# modprobe ipmi_si  
 root@donkey:~# modprobe ipmi_devintf    

2.- Configuring IPMI network settings with ipmitool

 root@donkey:~# ipmitool lan set 1 ipsrc static  
 root@donkey:~# ipmitool lan set 1 ipaddr 192.168.0.201  
 Setting LAN IP Address to 192.168.0.201  
 root@donkey:~# ipmitool lan set 1 netmask 255.255.255.0  
 Setting LAN Subnet Mask to 255.255.255.0  
 root@donkey:~# ipmitool lan set 1 defgw ipaddr 192.168.0.1  
 Setting LAN Default Gateway IP to 192.168.0.1  
 root@donkey:~# ipmitool lan print  
 Set in Progress     : Set Complete  
 Auth Type Support    : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD  
 Auth Type Enable    : Callback : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD  
             : User   : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD  
             : Operator : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD  
             : Admin  : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD  
             : OEM   : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD  
 IP Address Source    : Static Address  
 IP Address       : 192.168.0.201  
 Subnet Mask       : 255.255.255.0  
 MAC Address       : 00:25:90:XX:XX:XX  
 SNMP Community String  : public  
 IP Header        : TTL=0x00 Flags=0x00 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x00  
 BMC ARP Control     : ARP Responses Enabled, Gratuitous ARP Disabled  
 Default Gateway IP   : 192.168.0.1  
 Default Gateway MAC   : 00:00:00:00:00:00  
 Backup Gateway IP    : 0.0.0.0  
 Backup Gateway MAC   : 00:00:00:00:00:00  
 802.1q VLAN ID     : Disabled  
 802.1q VLAN Priority  : 0  
 RMCP+ Cipher Suites   : 0,1,2,3,6,7,8,11,12  
 Cipher Suite Priv Max  : aaaaXXaaaXXaaXX  
             :   X=Cipher Suite Unused  
             :   c=CALLBACK  
             :   u=USER  
             :   o=OPERATOR  
             :   a=ADMIN  
             :   O=OEM  

3.- Configuring user credentials with ipmitool

Default admin user is 'ADMIN', here is how I set his password:

 root@donkey:~# ipmitool user list 1  
 ID Name       Callin Link Auth IPMI Msg  Channel Priv Limit  
 2  ADMIN      false  false   true    ADMINISTRATOR  
 root@donkey:~# ipmitool user set password 2 yourpassword  

4.- Accessing IPMI interface

We can now access the IPMI interface and log into the system by going to:

https://192.168.0.201 (this is the IP I assigned to the IPMI interface).

References

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19464-01/820-6850-11/IPMItool.html

http://ipmitool.sourceforge.net/manpage.html