Reboot your server remotely with IPMI using Dell’s BMC

I bought a new poweredge T110 server, it came with BMC (Baseboard management controller) already installed. I needed to reboot the system, because it was unresponsive (Windows 2008 server crashed). However I can’t RDP into it, and I’m not at the site where the physical machine is located. All I needed was someone to power cycle it, but no one was available. That’s when I did some research. Apparently all new poweredge servers come with at least BMC installed. I couldn’t purchased an iDrac for that server because it wasn’t available. So after some research I found the Dell BMC supports IPMI. However you need something to access the BMC using IPMI, and I don’t have linux so I can’t use the impitool. That’s when I found this software, IPMIView from Supermicro. Now you have to first configure the BMC, physically on the box before you can do all this (usually when the server boots up you’ll see this message press ctrl – e to configure BMC within 5 seconds). Luckily I configured this when I installed the server initially.

1. Install the software.

2. Go to File > New System

3. Put in the IP Address for the BMC controller, this should be different that your ip address for the server.

4. Double click on your the newly created system, and put in your username and password (again you should’ve configured this initially on the BMC controller when you installed the server).

5. Now go to IPM Device, and pick reset.

6. Now you server should reboot, like if you were on site pressing the power button.

1. dotCowboy says:

   March 26, 2010 at 5:49 pm

   great tool to know and have – thanks for the write up~
2. Craig says:

   April 25, 2010 at 7:48 am

   Thanks!