American Megatrends Announces Support for the Data Center Manageability Interface (DCMI) Specification

Thursday: May 28, 2009

Editorial Summary:

• AMI announces support for the Data Center Manageability Interface (DCMI) Specification with its MegaRAC® Family, which includes remote control firmware, PCI and daughter cards, service processors and a Baseboard Management Controller
• Based on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), DCMI is designed to meet the needs of data centers with thousands of servers
• DCMI support is already included in the MegaRAC flagship product, the MegaRAC Service Processor (SP) firmware stack
• MegaRAC® SP integrates perfectly with MegaRAC® Extendible Management Suite (XMS), a centralized management tool for data centers.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - American Megatrends (AMI) is pleased to announce support for the Data Center Manageability Interface (DCMI) Specification, designed to meet the needs of High Density Data Centers having thousands of servers.

The DCMI open specification is based on the Intelligent Platform Management Specification (IPMI), a proven industry standard that describes a management sub-system for monitoring system health, sending alerts and providing serial text redirection (Serial over LAN) for accessing the system even when the Operating System is inoperative. DCMI defines a concise sub-set of IPMI capabilities that are most often utilized within High-Density data centers, while introducing new commands to leverage in-band management as well as strengthen power management and network transaction efficiency, key critical areas being targeted for the greatest improvements in cost control for Data Centers in the current decade.

AMI’s flagship product, the MegaRAC® SP, provides major OEMs with manageability middleware that powers today’s servers from entry-level to very high-end. MegaRAC® SP includes a Linux-based IPMI infrastructure, remote Keyboard, Video and Mouse (KVM) redirection, and support for the most advanced management technologies such as SMASH/CLP and WS-Management Web Services. The MegaRAC SP modular structure allows OEMs to select the functional modules that are better suited to their system design, while offering an ideal platform for rapid integration of the newest technologies and specifications, such as DCMI.

AMI's DCMI solution offers a very attractive, tiny footprint (as low as 256KB flash and 40KB RAM) for small microcontrollers or a fully fledged integrated solution with IPMI on high end Service Processors, including:

• Fast, very responsive DCMI stack
• Tiny footprint available for smaller microcontroller, for a single-chip solution
• Scalable solution for high-end Service Processors
• Flexible and highly customizable
• PDK and MegaRAC-DS (tool chain for porting)
• Centralized management scheme through MegaRAC® XMS

AMI’s DCMI code is packaged within our MegaRAC SP IPMI stack, which can easily be customized and integrated within any system design with the aid of AMI’s revolutionary graphical development tools: PDK and PMCP. The IPMI PDK, an easy-to-use OEM customization tool, provides a new set of hooks to accommodate the DCMI commands. Once an OEM performs the platform porting for IPMI, they simply fill in the hooks for DCMI. The PMCP utility brings remarkable savings to the platform porting process, by introducing an easy-to-use drag-and-drop method for the placement of the sensors, while enhancing re-utilization of code describing existing platform components.

AMI MegaRAC Extendible Management Suite (XMS) offers a management User Interface that perfectly complements the SP stack through a wealth of high-end centralized and collaborative manageability features for the datacenters.

S. Shankar, President and CEO of American Megatrends, expressed his enthusiasm for the perspective opened by DCMI: "DCMI will improve manageability for massive datacenters while fostering huge power savings, which will ultimately benefit consumers as well as the global community. In line with our tradition, AMI shows leadership in implementing the latest technologies. MegaRAC® server management products supports a very wide range of advanced standards and technologies from multiple industry organizations and silicon vendors; when they utilize MegaRAC® SP, OEMs benefit with a lot of freedom in choosing the optimal components and techniques for their designs. AMI offers today an absolutely compelling functionality and value proposition in server management. "

For more information on AMI and its products and services, call 1-800-U-BUY-AMI, or visit www.ami.com.

Contact:

Umbertina Vezzani, Marketing Communications Specialist, American Megatrends, Inc.

770-246-8617

About AMI : Founded in 1985 and known worldwide for AMIBIOS®, American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) supplies state-of-the-art hardware, software, and utilities to top-tier manufacturers of desktop, server, mobile and embedded systems. AMI’s industry leading Aptio® V UEFI BIOS firmware, innovative StorTrends® Network Storage hardware and software products and MegaRAC® remote server management solutions continue to garner industry acclaim and awards around the world. In line with the diversity of its technology and product line, AMI is a member of a number of industry associations and standards groups, such as the Unified EFI Forum (UEFI), the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, AMI has locations in the U.S., China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan to better serve its customers.

For more information on AMI, its products or services, call 1-800-U-BUY-AMI or visit www.ami.com.

Statement of Liability: © 2013 American Megatrends Inc. Product specifications are subject to change without notice. Products mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. All rights reserved. No warranties are made, either express or implied, with regard to the contents of this work, its merchantability or fitness for a particular use. This publication contains proprietary information, which is protected by copyright. American Megatrends reserves the right to update, change and/or modify this product at anytime.

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