Universal serial bus system interface for intelligent platform management interface communications
View Patent ↗Methods, systems, and apparatus are disclosed for utilizing a universal serial bus (“USB”) transport as a system interface to transmit and receive IPMI commands and responses. An intelligent platform management interface (“IPMI”) transport library is provided that receives IPMI commands from IPMI client applications executing on a host. The IPMI commands are encapsulated into vendor specific small computer systems interface (“SCSI”) commands and transmitted over the USB transport to a virtual mass storage device provided by a management device. In response to receiving the vendor specific commands, IPMI firmware executing on the management device extracts the IPMI commands and executes them. A response may be returned to the host by encapsulating the IPMI response into a vendor specific SCSI response and transmitting the response to the host.
1. A method for communicating with a computer management device, the method comprising:
(a) defining a vendor specific command conforming to the small computer systems interface (SCSI) standard for communicating with the management device, the management device having an intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) firmware and a baseboard management controller configured to monitor health-related aspects of a host computer, and the management device operative to emulate a mass storage device that is operatively accessible to the host computer on a communications link, conforming to the universal serial bus (USB) standard;
(b) encapsulating an IPMI command in the vendor specific SCSI command; and
(c) transmitting the vendor specific SCSI command with the encapsulated IPMI command over the USB communications link;
(d) receiving the vendor specific SCSI command at the management device;
(e) determining if the received vendor specific SCSI command is an emulated device command for communicating with the emulated mass storage device, then:
(f) when the received vendor specific SCSI command is an emulated device command for communicating with the emulated mass storage device, passing the vendor specific SCSI command to the emulated mass storage device; and
(g) when the received vendor specific SCSI command is not an emulated device command for communicating with the emulated mass storage device, extracting the IPMI command from the vendor specific SCSI command and passing the IPMI command to the IMPI firmware.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing the IPMI command at the IPMI firmware in the management device.
3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
generating an IPMI response to the IPMI command at the management device
encapsulating the IPMI response in a vendor specific response according to the SCSI standard; and
transmitting the vendor specific SCSI response over the USB communications link as a response to the vendor specific SCSI command.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the emulated mass storage device is an emulated USB mass storage device comprising an emulated CD-ROM device.
5. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause a management device having a baseboard management controller configured to monitor health-related aspects of a host computer and having an intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) firmware to perform functions comprising:
(a) emulating a mass storage device on a communication link conforming to the universal serial bus (USB) standard;
(b) receiving a vendor specific command over the USB communication link, the vendor specific command conforming to the small computer systems interface (SCSI) standard having an IPMI command encapsulated therein;
(c) determining if the received vendor specific SCSI command is an emulated device command for communicating with the emulated mass storage device, then:
(d) when the received vendor specific SCSI command is an emulated device command for communicating with the emulated mass storage device, passing the vendor specific SCSI command to the emulated mass storage device; and
(e) when the received vendor specific SCSI command is not an emulated device command for communicating with the emulated mass storage device, extracting the IPMI command from the vendor specific SCSI command and passing the IPMI command to the IPMI firmware in the management device.