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Servers

A server board has a management controller of its own (a BMC): AMI MegaRAC on ASRock Rack, Gigabyte and many others, iDRAC on Dell, iLO on HPE, OpenBMC. They share one interface, Redfish, and QKVM speaks it. Add a server like a KVM: type the address of its controller, with the controller's user name and password, and QKVM recognises it. Find KVMs on my network finds controllers as well.

Redfish has no picture of the screen, so a server's tile shows how the server is doing:

  • Whether it is on or off, its health as the controller judges it, how warm its processors are and how many fans are running. Enlarged, every temperature and every fan, and which of them the controller is not happy with.
  • Press power button switches the server on, or asks a running system to shut down. Hold power button cuts the power, and Press reset button restarts it the hard way. Restart controller restarts the controller itself; the server keeps running.
  • Locator light on lights the server up, front and back, for whoever is standing in front of the rack looking for it. The tile says so for as long as the light is on.
  • Open console leads to the controller's own page, where its remote console is. Where the controller hands out a pass for that (AMI's does, on the boards whose maker left it in), the link leads straight into the console, signed in. See below for what that means.
  • Alerts tell you when a server is switched off or comes back, when its controller stops answering, and when the controller reports a critical fault, with the names of the sensors behind it.

A few things are worth knowing:

  • Done means seen. A controller answers "accepted" before anything has happened, and now and then nothing does. When a server is switched on, or its power cut, QKVM waits until it sees the server on, or off, and says so if it does not get to. A request to shut down is different: the system takes the time it takes, and the tile shows when it is off.
  • A controller has its moments. It is a small computer, and one in perfect health lets a request time out now and then, or answers errors for some seconds while its server starts or stops. The tile does not change for that. It does once the controller has given no proper answer for three quarters of a minute.
  • One sign-in, kept. A controller allows only a few sessions at a time. QKVM signs in once, goes on using that session, and gives it back when the server is taken off the wall.
  • A wrong password is not repeated. Controllers lock an account after a few failed logins, so a password that was rejected is not tried again for a minute.
  • The account decides what works. An account with the controller's read-only role is enough to show the state. The power buttons and the locator light need the operator or administrator role.
  • A console opened from the wall is signed in as that account. The pass works once and goes to the browser of whoever clicked, nowhere else; that they went in is written to the activity log. Operators and admins of the wall can do this, viewers cannot, and an account limited to some machines only for those. If the people on your wall should not have what the controller's account has, give the wall a controller account that has less.