[Beowulf] Re: Purdue Supercomputer

[Anand Vaidya]

On Monday 12 May 2008 07:28:15 Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 04:45:46PM -0400, Joe Landman wrote:
> > Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> > >Hi Joel,
> > >Yes, but a separate and distinct power distribution for that +5 volt
> > >supply will then need to be implemented on the system board to support
> > >a full IPMI implementation residing on the system board. That was my
> > >point. You are confusing power source with implemented PCB power
> > >distribution.

I can't comment on Tyan etc. but I am familiar with IBM System-x and IBM does 
it this way:

The main power supply must have the AC input available. The server itself can 
be in powered off state (somewhat like a standby state). However, the power 
supply, power supply fans and the IPMI related logic are always on (they call 
it BMC - Baseboard Management Chip/Console)

The eth0 port is shared between "normal" ethernet functions and BMC. 
Internally the IPMI LAN interface chip sits on the same eth0 wires, but has a 
distinct MAC.  We can assign an IP for the IPMI interface from the BIOS or 
from an external DHCP server.

So, as long as the power supply has AC input and is functional, we can use 
IPMI to turn on/turn off, query temperatures etc

Regards
Anand

> >