Service processors: Friend or Foe?

Service processors such as IPMI, HP ILO, IBM RSA, Dell DRAC, ALOM, SUN and ILOM have been around for a number of years with increasingly more capability and almost always present in servers shipped today.

With varying degrees, service processors can provide many features such as remote power control, serial over LAN, server health monitoring, KVM and virtual media.

According to Dell, HP, IBM, SUN there were approximately 9 million servers with service processors shipped in 2005. But only about 2.2 million service processors were being utilized by the end of 2006.  Sorry old data.  We were unable to find more recent information.

The significant gap between service processors shipped and active illustrates the challenges of deploying service processors.

Below are some of the challenges from the field:

1. In a heterogeneous environment, each server manufacturer has its own access method for each type of service processor.  Even with the same manufacturer, there are different firmware versions of each of service processor. It becomes very labor intensive to maintain this infrastructure and learn each one.
2. Some service processors require additional installation and activation process compared to plug and play of console servers and KVM.
3. Depending on the server vendor, there might be a lack of proper authentication, authorization, accounting (AAA) security support to comply with a company’s existing security policy.
4. Some service processors require a dedicated Ethernet connection and IP address. There are costs associated with having and maintaining the additional Ethernet connection.
5. There is not an easy way to leverage existing service processors already deployed.
6. Consolidation tools of service processors are mostly vendor specific, which hinders scalability and interoperability.

Are you experiencing any of the challenges above? Talk to our team! We can help you leverage the power inherent in your service processors so they are your best friend. Email us, call us at 877.647.2728 or leave a comment below and we'll get right back to you.

Take our poll: Is your service processor, a friend or foe?