The MegaRAC from
American Megatrends
American Megatrends Inc., doing business as AMI, is an international hardware and software company, specializing in PC hardware and firmware. The company was founded in 1985 by Pat Sarma and Subramonian Shankar. It is headquartered in Building ...
is a product line of
baseboard management controller
The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system's CPU, firmware (BIOS or ...
(BMC) firmware packages and formerly Service Processors providing complete
Out-of-band
In telecommunications, out-of-band activity is activity outside a defined frequency band, or, metaphorically, outside of any primary communication channel. Protection from falsing is among its purposes.
Examples General usage
* Out-of-band agr ...
, or Lights-out remote management of computer systems independently of the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
status or location to troubleshoot computers and assure continuity of service. MegaRAC Service Processors came in various formats - PCI cards, embedded modules and software-only.
History
The MegaRAC remote management controller was introduced in 1998 for Dell, that later developed the
DRAC. The second generation card, MegaRACG2 (2002), provided console, KVM graphical redirection, firewall, and battery backup.
Products
AMI currently offers three MegaRAC packages: MegaRAC OneTree, AMI's latest BMC firmware package that is based on
OpenBMC; MegaRAC SP-X, an earlier BMC firmware package that is based on
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
;
and MegaRAC CommunityEdition, an open source BMC firmware package that is based on
OpenBMC.
MegaRAC SP Firmware
The MegaRAC SP firmware is composed of four major functionality groups:
* Complete IPMI 2.0 implementation, providing sensor and health monitoring, alerting, event logging serial over LAN, and so on. This firmware utilizes Linux 2.6.
* Virtual KVM for redirection of Video, Keyboard and Mouse signals. This uses AMI's proprietary compression technology.
* Virtual Media for redirection of CD/DVD. This is used to utilize a local CD/DVD to install an operating system or software on a remote host.
* DMTF compliant management infrastructure, implementing CIM, SMASH and WS-MAN.
The MegaRAC SP firmware is marketed to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), not end-users.
References
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External links
* {{Official website}
Out-of-band management