Description
This incidence indicates that the Micosoft IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) driver is either not installed at all or not installed properly on a Windows system.
The Microsoft IPMI driver communicates with the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) on many IBM systems. The BMC is an IPMI compliant service processor. IPMI is one of the leading industry standards for server platform management.
Service processors, sometimes also called management controllers or management processors, are used not only to monitor system health but also to manage systems. IBM RSA-II (Remote Supervisor Adapter II) is another kind of service processor that IBM offers. Often, these management controllers also provide out-of-band management capability, which allows systems to be managed remotely even if the OS is absent or the system is not fully powered on.
The Microsoft IPMI driver is a required component on Windows Server 2008 or later, for the OS and applications to communicate with the BMC and access its platform management functionality. Many IBM platform management tools also require this driver to be in place. Such tools include ASU (Advanced Settings Utility), DSA (Dynamic System Analysis), ESA (Electronic Service Agent), Director Agent, and Hardware Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
See the "Additional information" section below for more information about the Microsoft IPMI device driver.
Causes
Either the system BIOS does not yet support the requirements for the Microsoft IPMI driver to work properly, or the Microsoft IPMI device driver is not installed properly.
Note that on Windows Server 2008 or later, the native Microsoft IPMI driver is used in place of the OSA/Avocent IPMI driver. The OSA/Avocent IPMI device driver should be uninstalled and should not be installed on Windows Server 2008 or later.
Implications
For a Windows Server 2008 system (or later) running on an IBM platform that includes a BMC but that is missing the Microsoft IPMI driver, hardware component instrumentations by the BMC will not be available for systems management software (for example, IBM Director or Microsoft Operations Manager).
However, if an RSA-II (Remote Supervisor Adapter II) and its software stack are properly installed on the system, systems management software supported by IBM Director Agent will still be able to perform platform management through RSA-II. However, you should install the driver so that other IBM platform management tools can also take full advantage of the built-in management functionality that comes with IBM systems.
Resolutions
1. Follow the steps provided in the "Additional information" section below to check for a new BIOS update that supports the Microsoft IPMI device driver. See "Additional information" about installing the Microsoft IPMI device driver.
2. Uninstall the OSA/Avocent IPMI driver if it is installed. Consult Microsoft's documentation about how to uninstall a device driver.
3. As an alternative, consider installing an IBM RSA-II on the system to enable system management functionality without requiring a device driver. See "Additional information" for more information about IBM RSA-II.
Additional information
For more information about the Microsoft IPMI device driver, issues with the driver installation, or troubleshooting the driver, visit Microsoft Web sites -- "IPMI Driver Functionality", or Hardware Management Introduction.
For the compatibility matrix between IBM System x systems and Windows, consult IBM ServerProven System x and xSeries compatibility - Microsoft. For BladeCenter x86 blade servers, consult IBM ServerProven Compatibility for BladeCenter products.
To check for a new BIOS update that supports the Microsoft IPMI driver, visit the "IBM System x support search" Web site, select "Download" for "Task", select the appropriate "Product Family", "Machine type", and "Operating system" values, enter "BIOS" in the "Search for" field, and then click "Search". In the "Change History" section of the "Flash BIOS update" download, look for the feature added for "BMC/IPMI object in ACPI" or similar verbiage. For BladeCenter x86 blade servers, visit the IBM BladeCenter support search Web site and follow similar steps.
For complete product information about IBM RSA-II, visit IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II. To plan for systems management upgrades with RSA-II, consult IBM ServerProven System x System Management Upgrades.
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