A single chip solution for remote server access was announced by Peppercon
this week. The chip is expected to show up in servers from SuperMicro and
other vendors by February.
By integrating the Peppercon KIRA100 chip in the server, Peppercon says
remote server management becomes less expensive than PCI add-in cards and
other solutions costing $500 or more. The company estimates the KIRA100 adds
about $70 to the cost of a server.
Servers outfitted with the KIRA100 chip can be managed at the BIOS level
from anywhere over the Internet, helping to accelerate repair and cut down
maintenance costs. The chip supports several of the key manageability access
standards including IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface), SSH
SMASH-CLP (Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware-Command Line
Protocol).
“This enables remote installation of a new operating system or the
ability to boot remotely from any device using IP Technology,” said Michael
Patellis, director of OEM Sales at Peppercon.
The company’s stated mission is to: “Make remote server management a
commodity feature.”
The KIRA 100 is based on a 32-bit, high-performance, lower-power 920T ARM
Architecture V4 RISC microprocessor. It is equipped with a media
co-processor to accelerate video processing, and a comprehensive set of
system and peripheral functions that Peppercon said are useful in a variety
of remote management applications.
Last year Zwickau, Germany-based Peppercon became a wholly owned
subsidiary of Raritan, based in Somerset, N.J. Raretin is a leading global
provider of enterprise, analog and digital KVM
console control, remote access, and centralized server management solutions.
“Raritan has over 50,000 data center customers so they know what they need
for remote access and system management and that helped in the design,” said
Patellis.
Peppercon has been working with AMD on development and
promotion of the Open Platform Management Architecture, an open standard for
server management subsystems. Intel also works with
Peppercon on board management hardware.
Patellis said Peppercon is in negotiations with other server makers in
addition to SuperMicro who he expects to also adopt the KIRA100 for servers
early next year.