CIMC vs IPMI on both B and C series UCS

[tenaro.gusatu.novici]

Hi guys,

any chance somebody can explain difference between CIMC and IPMI. Some pages on CCO are stating that CIMC is used on C series while some other pages are mentioning it when talking about blades too. Can I open web browser and type in IP address that will show me CIMC running on B200M2? Does it look similar as CIMC on C series?

I've found CLI command on UCS Manager that allows to turn off IPMI and now I'm even more confused because some docs on CCO are saying CIMC is just an old name for BMC and I know that BMC is embedded CPU that takes care about IPMI feature...

Regards,

Tenaro

[lwatta · Accepted solution]

So the CIMC has had many names.

IBMC = BMC = CIMC. So if you see either IBMC or BMC in any documentation you can safely replace that with CIMC. Also please bring that to our attention if you still see either IBMC or BMC in our documentation.

So the CIMC chip is the same on the B and the C series. The interface is a little different but they both provide the same functionality. On a standalone C series the CIMC provides a lot more information because there is no UCSM to show inventory, modify the BIOS and allow you do other things.

You can download the KVM standalone app that will allow you to go straight to the KVM for a B-series but it will look different then the interface for the standalone C-series. If a C-series is integrated with UCSM it gets the B-series interface.

The CIMC allows for IPMI access. So on a C-series if you don't have the CIMC configured you can't run IPMI to the server. CIMC is always active for B-series but IPMI is selectable via the Service Profile.

Hope that answers the questions

louis

[tenaro.gusatu.novici]

Can we say that IPMI is standard protocol created to fetch data/parameters from special Intel chip (named BMC) that is connected with varioius sensors inside server? On the other side, CIMC is nice graphical (and Cisco proprietary) presentation of same data/parameters fetched from the same BMC processor, right?

[padramas]

Hello,

In simple terms, IPMI is overall framework that enables to monitor hardware based on the sensors on the system board.

What is IPMI ( a short animation )

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi/ani/index.htm

More detailed information about IPMI 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipmi

A mini onboard system with CPU, memory etc. with suite of software applications is called as CIMC ( Cisco name )  <==> ( BMC - generic name ). CIMC provides rich set of features to remotely manage and monitor the server hardware.

Examples of applications are http interface, vmedia, KVM, IPMI over LAN etc

So IPMI query from outside system would go through CIMC to interact with IPMI capable components on the system board.

HTH

Padma