In the systems management, mostly we know about the In-Band Management method but how about the Out-of-Band Management?
Let's find out.
Out-Of-Band (OOB) Management (sometimes called lights-out management - LOM) is a method of remotely controlling and managing critical IT assets and network equipment using a secure connection through a secondary interface that is physically separate from the primary network connection.
You know FTP protocol, right? It uses out-of-band control: the Control connection and the Data connection separation:
- Independent of the production (main) network.
- OOB use the management interfaces (or serial ports) for managing devices.
- Protocols: Telnet, SSH, HTTP(S), SNMP, Redfish ....
- Severs support: Dell iDRAC, HPE ILO, Supermicro BMC ....
- Allows remote reboot, shutdown, powering on the system.
- Hardware sensor monitoring (fan speed, power voltages,...).
- Can access local media like a DVD drive, or disk images, from the remote machine.
- Can be used to adjust BIOS settings that may not be accessible after the operating system has already booted.
- Settings for hardware RAID or RAM timings can also be adjusted as the management card needs no hard drives or main memory to operate.
Compare with In-Band Management
| In-Band Management | Out-Of-Band Management |
|---|---|
| Data and control commands travel across the same network route | Control data on a separate connection from main data |
| No additional manually configure the network settings | Manually configure the network settings |
| Only works after the operating system has been booted | Independent of the operation system |
| Low cost, independent of the vendors | High cost, dependent of the vendors |
My Bash scripts using the SNMP protocol to get the server hardware information.
Script to get server hardware information base on SNMP protocol.
Usage: main.sh -cn [community_name] -ip [ip_address] , choose these options:
- h/--help: Display this help message
- cn/--community_name: Community name
- c/--cpu_info: To get server CPU info
- d/--disk_info: To get server DISK info
- ip/--ip_address: Remote server ip address (for local, use localhost/127.0.0.1)
- r/--ram_info: To get server RAM info
- n/--nic_info: To get server NIC info
- o/--overall_info: To get base info, this for DEFAULT
- p/--port: Server's SNMP port
Examples:
./main.sh -cn ABCD123!@# -ip 10.10.10.10 -c -r
Look into it to know more. Here is result:
