Abbreviated as IPMI, the Intelligent Platform
Management Interface is a remote
hardware health monitoring and management system that defines interfaces
for use in monitoring the physical health of
servers, such as temperature,
voltage, fans,
power supplies and
chassis. It was developed by Dell, HP, Intel
and NEC, but has many more industry promoters, adopters and contributors.
The IPMI Initiative derives its name from the main specification (IPMI), which
defines the messages and system interface to platform management hardware. It
comprises three specifications:
- Intelligent Platform Management Interface
(IPMI)
- Intelligent Platform Management Bus (IPMB)
- Intelligent Chassis Management Bus (ICMB)
The IPMB specification defines an internal management bus for extending
platform management within a chassis, while the ICMB specification defines the
external management bus between IPMI-enabled systems. [Specifications adapted
from the Intel IPMI
Web page]
