IPMi

Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is an open standard for out-of-band management and monitoring of computer systems. It defines a management interface that communicates with a dedicated management controller, the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), and various system components to monitor hardware health, control power, and access event data independent of the host operating system. IPMI provides access to sensors such as temperature, voltage, fan speed, chassis intrusion, and power state, as well as remote console and virtual media features through supported interfaces.

Developed in the late 1990s as a collaboration among major server vendors, IPMI is maintained by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). The standard has evolved through IPMI 1.5 and IPMI 2.0. It specifies a set of messaging protocols and hardware interfaces for communicating with the BMC, commonly over a system management bus or network. IPMI supports event logging, alerting via alerts to a management console, and remote power control, with different transport paths such as KCS, SMBus, and network RMCP-based channels.

In typical deployments, the BMC is integrated on the motherboard or as an add-in controller and remains active independent of the host system. Administrators use IPMI to poll sensor data, perform power cycling, mount remote media, and monitor system health through a management workstation. Security considerations include exposure of BMC interfaces to networks, weak default credentials, and the need for authentication, encryption, firmware updates, and network segmentation. Modern environments increasingly complement IPMI with Redfish, a RESTful management standard that offers similar capabilities with enhanced security and extensibility.

IPMI remains widely supported on many servers, including legacy hardware, and continues to underpin many hardware-monitoring and remote-management workflows. While newer management stacks and the Redfish standard are gaining traction, IPMI's compatibility and broad vendor support keep it in active use in data centers and enterprise IT.