MegaRAC

The MegaRAC from American Megatrends is a product line of Service Processors providing complete Out-of-band, or Lights-out remote management of computer systems independently of the Operating System status or location to troubleshoot computers and assure continuity of service. MegaRAC Service Processors come in various formats - PCI cards, embedded modules, software-only.

History

The MegaRAC remote management controller was introduced in 1998 for Dell, that later developed the DRAC. The second generation card, MegaRACG2 (2002), provided console, KVM graphical redirection, firewall, and battery backup. Successive MegaRAC generations, the G3 and G4, provide incremental performance at a better price point.

AMI launched the MegaRAC PM Firmware Solution in 2002 to support Intelligent Platform Management Interface IPMI. The code is AMIBIOS independent.

The MegaRAC SP and launched in 2007, the firmware implements IPMI 2.0 complete KVM console redirection, and remote media for System-on-Chip.

MegaRAC SP Firmware

The MegaRAC SP firmware is composed of four major functionality groups:

The MegaRAC SP firmware is marketed to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), not end-users.

MegaRAC XMS Management Solution

MegaRAC XMS , with its plugins, can be used to manage your IPMI devices, Operating Systems, Intel® Active Management Technology (AMT) devices, AMD® DASH enabled systems and much more. XMS can extend its management capabilities with its plugin model. XMS base platform provides the management infrastructure for the plugins and individual plugin provides you the manageability features.

Server Management plug-in monitors and reports the health and performance of the devices through the BMC.
SX plug-in uses Intelligent Platform Management Interface(IPMI) for sensor monitoring, event capturing etc…
KVM and Media redirection are also supported on capable devices.
In-band OS Management plugin lets you manage systems running Microsoft® Windows® operating systems and Linux® operating systems seamlessly.
The plug-in monitors and reports the health and performance of operating system and applications present in the managed devices.
Client Management plugin does a complete out-of-band remote management of the system using its AMT component.
This lets you monitor and manage even when the system is in power off state or when the operating system is not loaded.
Discover and manage all your VMWare ESX servers and its virtual machines.
VX plugin lets you continuously monitor the health and performance of the servers and generate reports based on historical data.
Console redirection is also available for individual VMs.
VM Management – Hyper-V plugin lets you discover and manage the Microsoft Hyper-V enabled server,
as well as, monitors and reports the health and performance of those servers.
Power Efficiency Management plugin lets you visualize your enterprise network as different power zones
and allows you to configure or schedule power policies on those zones.

References