1. Introduction

The IPU-M2000 baseboard management controller (BMC) is an ASPEED AST2520, running software based on the OpenBMC project.

The responsibilities of the BMC software stack are to control, monitor and manage system hardware, including power, sensors, inventories and event logging. You can control this management and monitoring using a variety of user interfaces such as a command line interface (CLI), graphical user interface (GUI), REST, IPMI and Redfish.

This document describes these functions and the different interfaces provided by the BMC software on an IPU-M2000.

Note

Note that setting a power cap is an advance preview feature in the current versions of the IPU-M2000 device. It will be fully qualified in early 2021.

To access the BMC, you will need the following information from the system administrator:

• BMC host name or IP address

• OpenBMC user ID and password

Initially, there will a single default user account on the BMC. When you log in as that user you can create further accounts, if you wish (see Section 8, User management).

1.1. BMC command line interface

To use the command-line interface, you must be logged in to the BMC via SSH or the serial console.

The command line interface uses either standard Linux commands or the ipum_utils command.

1.2. Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface (GUI) to the BMC is available. This can be accessed using a web browser.

1.3. REST API

You can send REST API commands using curl or the openbmctool.py command line tool on the host server.

OpenBMC recommends token-based authentication when using the REST interface and provides some command examples, including power related operations. See the “cheatsheet”. A successful REST command results in a “200 OK” message as shown below:

{
  "data": null,
  "message": "200 OK",
  "status": "ok"
}

1.4. IPMI

You can use the the ipmitool to control the BMC over IPMI. This can be downloaded from https://github.com/ipmitool/ipmitool.

1.5. Redfish

The Redfish standard is a suite of specifications that deliver an industry standard protocol providing a RESTful interface for the management of servers, storage and networking.

The IPU-M2000 BMC supports a Redfish basic profile. You can perform operations through the Redfish interface by sending curl queries to the URI. You can also use a browser to access the Redfish GUI.

1.6. Abbreviations and acronyms

The following abbreviations are used throughout this document.

Table 1.1 Abbreviations

Abbreviation	Description
BIST	Built-in self test
BMC	Baseboard management controller
CLI	Command line interface
GUI	Graphical user interface
FRU	Field replaceable unit
IPMI	Intelligent platform management interface
IPU	Intelligence Processing Unit
REST	Representational state transfer
SDR	Sensor data record
SEL	System event log
SNMP	Simple network management protocol
SOL	Serial over LAN