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BMC & Server Management
Real BMC emulators. Real IPMI commands. Real data center skills.
Manage servers remotely the way data center engineers do. SSH into BMC consoles, run IPMI commands, read sensors, control power, pull event logs, and automate with Redfish REST APIs. Each lab connects you to a live BMC emulator alongside your Firecracker workstation.
22 hands-on labs across 4 modules, about 13 hours of work. Every lab runs on a real virtual machine in your browser, and checks your work on the machine itself.
Modules and labs
Your first shift at IronCore DC-EAST. Learn what a BMC is, how to connect via SSH and IPMI, create user accounts, pull hardware inventory, read sensors, and control server power. Every task mirrors what a real data center technician does on day one.
- First Contact - Meet the BMC, the always-on computer inside every server. Learn out-of-band management with interactive diagrams, then verify a live Dell BMC with ipmitool on a
- User Setup - The factory ADMIN password cannot go to production. Learn BMC account slots and IPMI privilege levels with interactive diagrams, then provision a named operator
- Hardware Inventory - Prove what hardware is in the box before an OS ever installs. Read the FRU and SPD chips through the BMC, capture Dell-shell inventories into audit files, and p
- Sensor Readings - A thermal alarm tripped in Bay 14 overnight. Learn how sensors, thresholds, and the BMC cooling loop work with interactive diagrams, then audit a live Dell BMC:
- Power Control - The server in Bay 14 ignored a re-energized circuit and stayed dark. Learn standby power, the Dell serveraction power verbs, and cycle versus reset with interac
Real operational tasks that data center engineers handle daily. Pull event logs after crashes, reconfigure BMC networking, set up serial-over-LAN for remote troubleshooting, configure hardware watchdogs, and perform security audits.
- Event Log - Something happened at 3 a.m. Read the server's black box: decode SEL severities with interactive diagrams, pull the 03:47 crash timeline from a live BMC, export
- Network Config - Audit a BMC's own network identity: its address, MAC, VLAN, and how the management plane is actually wired. Read it from inside and outside with interactive dia
- Serial Over LAN - No SSH, no monitor, no crash cart: reach a dead machine's serial console over the management network with Serial-over-LAN, then capture the boot failure that ex
- Watchdog Timer - The BMC's dead-man switch: learn how a hardware watchdog reboots a hung server all on its own, then inspect, configure, arm, evidence, and stand down the real t
- Security Hardening - BMCs are the most attacked door in the rack. Audit a flagged Dell BMC's users, cipher suites, LAN auth, and channel access with interactive diagrams and real ip
- Memory Fault Diagnosis - A healthy-looking system rollup can still hide one failed DIMM. Diagnose a memory fault across both planes: read current component health over Redfish, confirm
- Live Fault Triage - This node reads healthy, but a job keeps dying. Watch a DIMM fail in real time across both planes: baseline DIMM.B2 as OK over Redfish, catch the correctable-er
The industry is moving from IPMI to Redfish. Learn the REST API that is replacing legacy protocols. Discover resources, pull inventory via JSON, monitor thermals and power, execute remote actions, and write Python automation scripts.
- Redfish Discovery - Meet Redfish, the modern management API. Walk a live BMC's REST tree with curl, authenticate, extract values with jq, and map Systems, Chassis, and Managers on
- Redfish Inventory - Redfish turns hardware inventory into structured JSON. Walk the Systems, Chassis, and Managers tree with curl, extract exactly the fields the NOC asked for with
- Redfish Monitoring - Thermal and power telemetry as clean JSON: pull the Redfish Thermal and Power endpoints with curl, filter readings against critical thresholds with jq, cross-ch
- Redfish Actions - Stop reading, start doing: discover the Redfish Reset action, POST a graceful shutdown, watch PowerState flip over the API, bring the server back, and cross-che
- Redfish Automation - Turn single Redfish queries into a bash fleet health check: probe liveness by status code, carve identity, thermal, and power fields with jq, then assemble a pr
The capstone. Everything you practiced on the emulator was modelled on a standard, and this module points the same tools at the real thing: the OpenBMC firmware image the project publishes, booted on an emulated AST2500 service processor. Read a live bmcweb service root, take a session token and watch a forged one get refused, drive the power state machine through ComputerSystem.Reset, run ipmitool against the firmware own ipmid, and finish with a root shell on the service processor itself.
- The Real Service Root - Point curl at real OpenBMC firmware and read what a BMC actually exposes. Identify the service root schema and protocol version, follow the OData links to the C
- Session Auth and the Token - Stop sending the password on every request. Open a Redfish session against real OpenBMC firmware, catch the X-Auth-Token out of the response headers, spend it o
- Power Control and the State Machine - Drive a real power state machine from four hundred miles away. POST ComputerSystem.Reset against live OpenBMC firmware, read the 204 it answers with, catch Powe
- The Event Log and ipmitool - Run ipmitool against real firmware and learn which numbers on a BMC you can trust. Pull mc info, the System Event Log and the 135-entry sensor catalog, then con
- Inside the Firmware - Walk the whole chain and then open the lid. SSH into the OpenBMC service processor itself, find the ARM Linux kernel, the flash layout with the host firmware pa
Frequently asked questions
How many labs are in BMC & Server Management?
BMC & Server Management has 22 hands-on labs, roughly 13 hours of guided work, spread across 4 modules.
Do I need my own server or hardware to do the BMC & Server Management labs?
No. Every lab boots a real virtual machine in your browser, with a real Linux shell. There is nothing to install, and nothing on your own machine to break.
What level is BMC & Server Management?
Labs in this track are rated beginner, intermediate, advanced. The track starts from the beginning, so no prior experience is assumed.