Tuesday, June 25, 2013  Sun, Oracle, Intel: ALOM, ILOM, AMT,
IPMI, and SNMP  Capabilities to manage systems have
traditionally been at the OS level. Over a decade ago, companies
such as Sun started bundling out-of-band management into their
Open Systems servers, allowing such capabilities such as dial-
in, serial attachment to console ports, and attachment over LAN
at a layer underneath the Operating System [such as Solaris].
This type of capability has been expanded upon by proprietary
CPU vendors such as Intel and bundled into an increasing number
of systems.  [ALOM Diagram, courtesy googlux] Three
Capabilities: The three capabilities which exist today seem to
be: LOM - Sun/Oracle Lights Out Management interface [targeting
servers] IPMI - Intelligent Platform Management Interface
[targeting servers] AMT - Intel Active Management Technology
[targeting desktops]  These technologies provide access to the
firmware, which is either OpenBoot or BIOS depending on whether
one is running an Open System (such as SPARC