08-09-2021 | Advantech | Design & Manufacture
Advantech has launched its new out-of-band management solution - an intelligent board management controller known as an iBMC. The company developed it to simplify the management of remote systems and edge devices. The controllers are embedded hardware-based technology that enables administrators to conduct power management tasks (power on/off, force shutdown, and system reboot) remotely even during abnormal or out-of-range conditions, such as a software failure or operating system crash. This is recognised as out-of-band power management, and it offers a secondary communication channel for accessing and controlling equipment in an infrastructure network.
For industrial applications, including continuous manufacturing and AI-based edge computing, system interruptions or failures may cause extended downtime, giving significant losses in productivity. In most circumstances, restarting the device may restore system functionality. However, for devices deployed in the field or at the edge, this could cause delays if technicians want to manually restart devices onsite. By facilitating corrective action through remote out-of-band power management, the company's new solution not only removes onsite maintenance but also lessens system downtime and operational costs.
IoT infrastructure typically involves hundreds of devices deployed at many geographically dispersed sites. Its WISE-DeviceOn software platform is intended for remote management of multiple interconnected industrial IoT devices. With the integration of iBMC technology, the solution can serve as an in-band and out-of-band management system that facilitates comprehensive access, configuration, analysis, monitoring, and control of all IoT network assets from a single centralised platform. This drastically simplifies remote servers, systems, and peripherals management for a wide range of industrial applications.
To assure ease of integration, the iBMC is compatible with many of the company's IPC solutions, including the UNO-348/148 control cabinet PCs and TPC-B610 box PCs, as well as the AIMB-787 motherboard, ACP-4340 4U rackmount system (with AIMB-787), and MIC-770 V2 fanless modular IPC depending on BIOS version. Moreover, iBMC technology will be supported by many of Advantech's soon-to-be-released IPCs featuring 10th gen Intel Core i3/i5/i7/i9, as well as Pentium/Celeron CPUs.
