4 ms·

Pfft, this guy only mentioned the obvious horrible security implications. Aside from that glaring flaw, there is also the small matter that IPMI software is al

Pfft, this guy only mentioned the obvious horrible security implications. Aside from that glaring flaw, there is also the small matter that IPMI software is all implemented by raging idiots who got fired from BIOS vendors, and then got fired again from the people who write mobile radio firmware, and then got fired again from the company that writes the software in your electric toothbrush. They never work in actual outages, cause more host outages than they solve, and are in no way a substitute for having humans on site. I had a rack full of garbage from Penguin Computing that would hang on reboot with the message that the BMC was not responding. Thanks, that's helpful. And dozens of horror stories from every vendor ranging from SuperMicro to HP and IBM. I encourage you to guess whether Facebook, Google, and Amazon use IMPI to manage anything. Have a look at the OpenCompute designs for a hint.

subway 14y ago
http://opencompute.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/OpenComputeProjectOpenHardwareMachinesManagement.pdf http://opencompute.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/OpenCom... These designs?
- thrownaway2424 14y ago
  Doh. Just goes to show, you can open up your process, but you can't make people have judgement and taste.
  - dfc 14y ago
    And/or that you should look before you speak.
- wmf 14y ago
  The Open Compute 1.0 servers had reboot-on-LAN instead of BMCs, but then Facebook went back. I wonder why.
dfc 14y ago
"this guy"? This guy is Dan Farmer[1], I realize that does not make him infallible but he is definitely not someone looking for his 15 minutes of fame in order to make a name for himself. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  I read the comment not as a critique of the author, but rather as a further rant against the target of the author's ire.
  - dfc 14y ago
    After rereading it I think that's probably a fair interpretation. I guess I was thrown off from the fact that the author was the subject of the first sentence and therefore made it seem personal.
jws 14y ago
Very true. I searched long and hard to find Intel's vPro capable motherboards which support KVM. Lots of whitepapers for managers on the Intel site. Not much in the way of hard information about which motherboards work. My favorite was their suggestion that you download a tool and scan your network to see which ones work. Because that is easier than maintaining a list, I suppose. I can just buy one of each and work it out. That it took so long to figure out which motherboards even supported vPro KVM should have been a clue. I think they must be embarrassed by the thing and and don't want anyone to actually see it. For my efforts, I have VNC access to my motherboard that hangs when I try to connect to it from OS X, works a little bit, sometimes, for a while from Linux, then hangs until a power cycle. For extra delight, the ethernet chipset that supports this useless heap has long standing bugs with the Linux kernel with no work around. It works fine, unless you want to push more than a few megabits per second through it. Then it hangs, disconnects, and reconnects. Oh, it also took me two days to figure out how to even turn on the KVM without a Windows machine. Their tool won't run on Wine because its written in the new "portable" way, and for some arcane reason you can turn on lots of things from the BIOS, but not the KVM, you have to come in from an external machine with some misguided "one protocol to manage them all" system and an arcane text key.

subway 14y ago

http://opencompute.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/OpenComputeProjectOpenHardwareMachinesManagement.pdf http://opencompute.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/OpenCom... These designs?

thrownaway2424 14y ago
Doh. Just goes to show, you can open up your process, but you can't make people have judgement and taste.
- dfc 14y ago
  And/or that you should look before you speak.
wmf 14y ago
The Open Compute 1.0 servers had reboot-on-LAN instead of BMCs, but then Facebook went back. I wonder why.

dfc 14y ago

"this guy"? This guy is Dan Farmer[1], I realize that does not make him infallible but he is definitely not someone looking for his 15 minutes of fame in order to make a name for himself. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer

redthrowaway 14y ago
I read the comment not as a critique of the author, but rather as a further rant against the target of the author's ire.
- dfc 14y ago
  After rereading it I think that's probably a fair interpretation. I guess I was thrown off from the fact that the author was the subject of the first sentence and therefore made it seem personal.

jws 14y ago

Very true. I searched long and hard to find Intel's vPro capable motherboards which support KVM. Lots of whitepapers for managers on the Intel site. Not much in the way of hard information about which motherboards work. My favorite was their suggestion that you download a tool and scan your network to see which ones work. Because that is easier than maintaining a list, I suppose. I can just buy one of each and work it out. That it took so long to figure out which motherboards even supported vPro KVM should have been a clue. I think they must be embarrassed by the thing and and don't want anyone to actually see it. For my efforts, I have VNC access to my motherboard that hangs when I try to connect to it from OS X, works a little bit, sometimes, for a while from Linux, then hangs until a power cycle. For extra delight, the ethernet chipset that supports this useless heap has long standing bugs with the Linux kernel with no work around. It works fine, unless you want to push more than a few megabits per second through it. Then it hangs, disconnects, and reconnects. Oh, it also took me two days to figure out how to even turn on the KVM without a Windows machine. Their tool won't run on Wine because its written in the new "portable" way, and for some arcane reason you can turn on lots of things from the BIOS, but not the KVM, you have to come in from an external machine with some misguided "one protocol to manage them all" system and an arcane text key.