On Tue, 15 Nov 2011, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote: > Obviously if you don't have IPMI on some systems or cannot use it for other > reasons then that's tragic but inevitable. All I'm saying is that for new > system you should strongly consider it. Back in the days you actually > needed to buy an additional card for this but as I said on Supermicro > boards/systems you now get this on-board and it simplifies administration > greatly. Just a few days ago I had to re-install a system and in the > process change the SATA settings from IDE to AHCI in the bios. In the past > I had to go to the server to do this. Together with the managed switches I > can completely revamp the entire infrastructure if I wanted to and wouldn't > even have to leave my home to do it. Yep, it works really nicely in small HPC machines, where it completely replaces the managed PDUs we'd previously used, and costs you no extra cabling. In my case these are all Dell machines (IPMI's been standard for years on Dell servers). When the IPMI controller can be configured to use DHCP with a poke or two of the buttons on the front of the machine (if it's not been preconfigured) it's really quite quick to rack up and configure machines. jh