OSA Technologies Upgrades Its Server Manager Product to Include SA Forum / HPI Support for IPMI Systems
Flagship product now combines HPIi with IPMI — a market first — to offer greater manageability for high availability telecommunications, blades, and server hardware
SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 9, 2004 – OSA Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of embedded management products, including Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) software and firmware, a technology that exists within 30 percent of servers shipped worldwide during 2003, today announced that its latest release of Server Manager software now supports the Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) / Hardware Platform Interface (HPI). By adding HPI, additional levels of High Availability (HA) are provided. This support builds on OSA’s existing HPI activities - licensing Intel’s software implementation of the SA Forum/HPI specification and participating as a contributing member of the SA Forum to promote IPMI integration with HPI.
The new release of OSA Server Manager adds HPI-support to IPMI-enabled products based on Windows and Linux. OSA Server Manager provides a standards-based, centralized interface to health information including alerts, power control and asset tracking functions. New HA features are now realized with the addition of HPI to OSA’s Server Manager. For example, support for Hot Swap and redundancy for blade servers, and other telecommunications hardware now exist in Server Manager. HPI support combined with OSA’s existing IPMI products offers vendors unparalleled, multi-platform management products and building blocks based on open industry standards and technologies.
New features from IPMI v2.0, announced in February, will also be supported, such as enabling secure management using console redirection over the LAN. This makes OSA Server Manager the first product from an independent software vendor (ISV) to combine HPI and IPMI v2.0 features. In addition to supporting IPMI mandatory and optional features, products can also be tailored to meet individual customer needs for differentiation. SA Forum / HPI support will be generally available to vendors in May 2004. Pricing varies by implementation.
“This commitment to SA Forum / HPI underscores OSA’s objective to drive integration of management standards. OSA’s focus on standards-based embedded management solutions like IPMI 2.0, and now HPI, offers enhanced manageability products to Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA®) and other blade and telecommunications vendors that are compliant and seamlessly integrated with existing and future IPMI building blocks,” said Mark Lee, CEO and President of OSA. RHK, an industry research firm, recently valued the AdvancedTCA market at $3.7B by 2007 (RHK study: http://www.advancedtca.org).
OSA Server Manager Overview
For Data Centers, the cost of operations and administration represents between 50-70 percent of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Addressing this cost is key for users and vendors alike.
Traditional management solutions are limited during the boot phase or when the operating system (OS) does not respond. This is because these management solutions run as agents in the OS, making them dependent on the state of the OS. OSA Server Manager offers a unique approach to enhancing management during the boot phase (OS is not loaded) or when the OS is unresponsive. Management over LAN allows administrators to manage or power-cycle servers or individual blades remotely by directly accessing the IPMI controller, resolving service outages even when the OS is unresponsive.
Increasingly, customers are purchasing solutions that are cross-platform and that support industry standards. These characteristics are key to enabling next generation virtualization and automation environments. By utilizing SA Forum / HPI with Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standards like the Common Information Model (CIM), together with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and IPMI v2.0, users are assured of upward compatibility with new operating environments that support these and other management standards.
About the SA Forum and the HPI Specification
The SA Forum is the industry body dedicated to developing specifications that facilitate the faster delivery of cost-effective, carrier-grade infrastructure equipment and applications. The Forum’s specifications represent a crucial, missing piece of the ‘Commercial-Off-The-Shelf’ (COTS) ecosystem model – open, carrier-grade platform and middleware interfaces that tie together standards-based network equipment elements quickly and easily. HPI provides a platform-independent interface to platform-specific management services. It does this by representing the platform-specific characteristics of the system in an abstract model, then providing standard methods of monitoring or controlling that model. For more information about the SA Forum and HPI, visit http://www.saforum.org.
About IPMI
IPMI is an embedded management specification that defines a common interface to how vendors monitor their system hardware and sensors (temperature, voltage, fan, etc.), control system components (power supplies, blades, etc.), log important system events (chassis intrusion, system reset, etc.), to allow administrators to remotely manage and recover failed systems (power cycle, view BOOT process etc). It is typically implemented at the silicon level, and is independent of the CPU, OS, BIOS and backplane. Promoted by Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and NEC (NASDAQ:NIPNY), IPMI standardizes the way embedded management subsystems communicate with systems such as, the CPU, other embedded management subsystems and remote management applications. IPMI also offers enhanced manageability for products that support the AdvancedTCA initiative. Since 1998, more than 160 vendors have adopted IPMI, making it a market-proven standard.
About OSA Technologies
OSA Technologies, Inc. provides embedded platform management solutions to the global server, blade, telecommunications, networking, and storage marketplaces. It is the only Independent Software Vendor (ISV) dedicated to IPMI software and firmware. OSA's solutions are well entrenched through partnerships with major silicon vendors, system and design manufacturers, and branded OEMs. Building on its first mover advantage, OSA has strategically set up sales, support and development centers in San Jose, Taipei and Shanghai to more closely meet the embedded management needs of system vendors shipping OSA-enabled products worldwide. Co-founded in 2000 by a former Intel team, the company has secured a combined $20 million in funding from strategic investors including, AsiaVest, Dell, FAT Capital, Foxconn, Intel Capital, Storm Ventures, Sycamore Ventures, and other strategic investors. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California. More information about OSA can be found at http://www.osatechnologies.com.