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Joshua Boniface 2017-02-13 12:28:45 -05:00
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IPMI BMCs are pretty ubiquitous in the datacenter and enterprise computing, because in a warehouse full of computers, finding and walking up to one just to reset it or check its console is quite daunting. The same goes for a home server: it may just be in my basement, but in a closed-up rack it becomes a huge hassle to manage a machine without IPMI. I try to get it on every motherboard I buy, but currently my Ceph nodes are running with motherboards that lack built-in IPMI. To make them fully-remote-manageable, I decided they needed a BMC. IPMI BMCs are pretty ubiquitous in the datacenter and enterprise computing, because in a warehouse full of computers, finding and walking up to one just to reset it or check its console is quite daunting. The same goes for a home server: it may just be in my basement, but in a closed-up rack it becomes a huge hassle to manage a machine without IPMI. I try to get it on every motherboard I buy, but currently my Ceph nodes are running with motherboards that lack built-in IPMI. After an incident with one machine while I was on vacation, I finally decided that they needed remote management, and I decided to make my own BMC for them rather than waste money on replacement (IPMI-capable) motherboards.
## Enter the Raspberry Pi ## Enter the Raspberry Pi
If you don't know what it is, the Rapberry Pi is a small single-board computer, featuring an ARM SOC, Ethernet, USB, video, audio, and most importantly, GPIO, powered by MicroUSB and running the Debian distribution '[Raspbian](https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/)'. The GPIO pins allow, with a simple utility or Python library, one to controll or read information from various devices. The GPIO header also features a serial port which must be manually enabled. If you don't know what it is, the Rapberry Pi is a small single-board computer, featuring an ARM SOC, Ethernet, USB, video, audio, and most importantly, GPIO, powered by MicroUSB and running the Debian distribution '[Raspbian](https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/)'. The GPIO pins allow, with a simple utility or Python library, one to control or read information from various devices, including a serial console interface. These features make the Raspberry Pi a perfect fit for a BMC, and really not that far from the "real" BMCs found in most server-grade motherboards.
These features make the Raspberry Pi a perfect fit for a BMC. Low-power usage and an external USB power source means it can be kept on irrespective of the host state. The GPIOs allow on to control a power switch, reset switch, read from the power LED, and generally do a basic suite of server management tasks. And finally the built-in serial connected to a motherboard COM header allows a remote console. The perfect little BMC.
(Pictured: A Raspberry Pi) (Pictured: A Raspberry Pi)
[Picture - RPi] [Picture - RPi]