An enterprise maintains a dedicated management VLAN for lights-out access to its production servers. Late on a Friday night, a 2U rack server in a remote branch becomes completely unresponsive: the operating system has crashed, and the network team has disabled the trunk that carries the server's data NICs to prevent it from causing a broadcast storm. No personnel are on-site. You must remotely restore the system by performing these steps:
Hard power-cycle the chassis.
Open a console that shows POST messages and BIOS setup.
Attach a bootable ISO image from your laptop so you can reload the firmware and operating system.
Which built-in subsystem will let you accomplish all three tasks over the isolated management network, even though the host OS and data interfaces are offline?
Send a Wake-on-LAN magic packet to one port of the server's bonded data NICs.
Establish a Windows Remote Desktop Protocol session using the server's last known IP address.
Access the motherboard's baseboard management controller (BMC) through its dedicated IPMI port.
Issue SNMP write commands to the server's in-band management agent to reboot the host.
The only hardware component that meets every requirement is the server's baseboard management controller (BMC) reachable through the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) port. A BMC operates independently of the main CPU and system NICs, so it remains reachable when the operating system is crashed or the data network is disconnected. From the BMC's web or IPMI console you can:
Issue power-on, power-off and reboot commands to cycle power.
Launch KVM-over-IP to view POST, enter BIOS and monitor the server before any OS loads.
Use the virtual media feature to mount a remote ISO image and boot from it, enabling firmware flashes or a clean OS installation.
Wake-on-LAN can only send a power-on signal and requires the production NICs. RDP needs the operating system running and a reachable IP address. SNMP write commands are in-band and rely on the host NICs and SNMP agent; they cannot provide a console or virtual media. Therefore, accessing the BMC via its IPMI interface is the correct choice.
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What is a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)?
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