BMC vs DRAC or BMC+DRAC ...?

BMC is included on just about every server motherboard, the minimum management piece that you need to be "in the running" when customers look at servers.

On top of that every vendor has their unique out of band systems management adapter. DRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) for us, iLO (intelligent Lights Out Adapter) for HP, RSA (Remote Supervisor Adapter) for IBM. If your system has a DRAC or iDRAC, that's what you need to spend them time configuring. BMC is just on there because it's on the motherboard, we don't take it out just because the system also has a DRAC. DRAC has more functionality.

The BMC will allow you to power off and on systems, and serial over LAN access, which is why you mainly see BMC discussions around Linux. Gives those users remote console (text based) and remote power off/on at lower entry costs on the systems without a DRAC but with the BMC.

Here's the manual for the BMC if you want to dive down that path --> http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smbmcmu/BMCMU_4_0/en/ug/BMCUG.pdf

Here's the latest manual for the DRACs --> http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/idrac/idrac13mono/en/index.htm

Hope that helps.

Is there a way to completely disable BMC from within the bios? Don't want to have it listening/using any of the nic's.

I have a PowerEdge T110 II, for which I need the capability to remotely start it when it has shutdown for some reason (e.g. power failure).  I've been going around in circles for hours trying to find "How To" information on BMC and IPMI Utilities and have gotten nowhere.

I tried following your link above, but it only took me to the page with the manuals for my server, none of which are about the BMC.  the Power Edge T110 II Owners Manual only tells how to enter the BMC utility by pressing Ctrl+E, but nothing about the settings themselves nor how to access the BMC remotely, the "Getting Started" manual only tells how to plug in and turn on the system and the others are either about the various CPU's or Update information.

I have a copy of the iDRAC6 document, but that contains mostly information about the DRAC Express and Enterprise options, and references to documents that also cannot be found.

Can you PUHLEEEEZZE point me to some useful information about the BMC settings in the BIOS A-N-D information about how to access the server remotely to power it up when necessary.

Hi CREACONTECH,

You can access the latest BMC document from the following link:

ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/esuprt_software/esuprt_remote_ent_sys_mgmt/dell-openmanage-baseboard-mgmt-cntrllr-v4.6_User%27s%20Guide_en-us.pdf.

Hope it helps.

Reshmi