System Controller Interaction
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BMC Overview
Each compute blade in an IRU has a baseboard management controller (BMC). The BMC is a
built-in specialized microcontroller hardware component that monitors and reports on the
functional “health” status of the blade. The BMC provides a key functional element in the overall
Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) architecture.
The BMC acts as an interface to the higher levels of system control such as the IRU’s CMC board
and the higher level control system used in the system management node. The BMC can report
any on-board sensor information that it has regarding temperatures, power status, operating
system condition and other functional parameters that may be reported by the blade.When any of
the preset limits fall out of bounds, the information will be reported by the BMC and an
administrator can take some corrective action. This could entail a node shutdown, reset (NMI) or
power cycling of the individual blade.
The individual blade BMCs do not have information on the status of other blades within the IRU.
This function is handled by the CMCs and the system management node. Note that blades
equipped with an optional BaseIO riser board have a dedicated BMC Ethernet port.
System Controller Interaction
In all SGI UV 2000 servers all the system controller types (SMNs, CMCs and BMCs)
communicate with each other in the following ways:
• System control commands and communications are passed between the SMN and CMCs via
a private dedicated gigabit Ethernet network. The CMCs communicate directly with the
BMC in each installed blade by way of the IRU’s internal backplane.
• All CMCs can communicate with each other via an Ethernet “ring” configuration network
established within an SSI.
• In larger configurations the system control communication path includes a private, dedicated
Ethernet switch that allows communication between an SMN and multiple SSI
environments.
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