Generic BMC support for out-of-band connections

[fishter]

From the history of Mesh Central it is well understood that for out-of-band management the Intel AMT interface is supported well. But, this is obviously limited to one manufacturer.

Is there an appetite for increasing the number of baseboard management controllers (BMC) that MeshCentral can communicate with? I'm thinking of interfaces such as IPMI, iDRAC, iLO, etc.

Are there any architectural reasons why these alternative BMCs could not be utilized by MeshCentral in a similar manner to the AMT interface?

I can see a good use case for just controlling power state over these alternatives and after having the system boot up successfully, pass over the tasks to the in-band MeshAgent. But, if there is the option to handle remote desktops and terminals then this would become very interesting.

[si458]

sadly IPMI, iDRAC, iLO etc dont have central management like AMT does (CIRA)
they all require local access, so for us to integrate something like that your meshcentral sevrer would need direct access to the IP addresses of those devices
also remember meshcentral is a community project at the moment, so new features etc are few and far between
but if u wanted to SPONSOR development of these feature then do please contact myself and we can look into it

[fishter]

Thanks for the comment. The lack of a "checking-in" feature in IPMI is the real blocker. In my use-case I have no idea how the end-user will be connecting the device to a network so there is an inherent problem with discovery. And putting an IPMI login direct on the internet is just asking for trouble!

[si458]

@fishter yeh sadly thats the problem,
IPMI/iLO/etc dont support AMTs CIRA (central connection) where the remote devices connects back to you
instead you have to connect to it, so the meshcentral server would need direct access to the remote devices for this type of support!

NOW WE COULD implement a feature like the relay groups we already have, where you create a group which is connected to a remote device which runs the meshagent then the group uses that as a bridge! and then you control it within the meshcentral UI etc, but that would require time and funding/sponsorship etc

but you could experiment with that the relay groups tho!

1. install meshagent on a remote device within the network of the iLO/IPMI/etc device
2. create a relay group with that device as the main device
3. add in an SSH device (linux) in the relay group using the IP address of the iLO,IPMI device
4. then you can try the HTTP/HTTPS web relay feature OR the Web-VNC feature and that could work for you as a workaround?