Bill Sommerfeld wrote: > On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 16:07 +0100, Paul Jakma wrote: > >> Firmware 'near' the NIC (I've never seen an explanation of the exact >> mechanism) interposes itself between hardware and OS and 'hijacks' >> traffic to that port. It never makes it to the OS. >> > > one implication of this is that, when this is in use, the NIC cannot be > part of a L2 aggregation (because the upstream switch will load-spread > some of the management traffic flows to other ports in the aggregation). > > And using it with other L2/L3 redundancy technologies (such as IPMP and > OSPF-MP) is going to be tricky (the shared management IP address must > not be seen as reachable via other NICs). >
The above should not be an issue, but should be noted. AMT, and the low cost southbridge core that substitutes for a more formal "rack server BMC or ILOM module", is only really showing up on low cost desktops and laptops at this time. So far, the industry chooses to use more functional full blown service processors on rack servers, much like Sun does on all the Sun systems built by Systems Group under Fowler. Most laptops and desktops do not utilize IPMP and link aggregation, but I'd agree it should be noted in the man pages for both AMT components, and the NIC manpage, in cases where AMT is in use. Neal > - Bill > > >
