Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) is a controller embedded in the system board of the Cisco UCS server, which is used for primary configuration (management interface), remote access and management of Cisco UCS C series servers (rack type).
Cisco Solutions
Description
The CIMC controller is a modern and free solution for accessing Cisco servers at a remote distance from them, implemented on the basis of an IPMI card. CIMC supports several popular access and management interfaces: web interface, CLI command line, and XML API.
The controller “understands” the SNMP v3 protocol, Redfish v1.01, and is equipped with an IPMI v2 interface for accessing and configuring the server platform.
Among the key features of Cisco Integrated Management Controller are the following:
- support for various access and configuration interfaces, which also include an XML API that supports WebUI, Microsoft Windows PowerShell and the Python SDK;
- CIMC can work with SNMP v2 and v3 protocols with built-in IPMI and MIB;
- using CIMC, you can interactively update firmware (BIOS, Out-of-band upgrade, Cisco IMC and Cisco UCS VIC), support for automated multi-system updates for RAID and LOM is also implemented, the update process itself is simple and reliable;
- the ability to use the VBoot solution with fine-tuning of boot device parameters, and there is also support for one-time (one-time boot) downloads.
Advantages of Cisco Integrated Management Controller
Among all the positive aspects of CIMC, the following are worth noting:
- The controller supports work with built-in diagnostic tools that allow you to quickly identify problems, which significantly increases the availability of the system;
- CICM has an out-of-band RAID Setup wizard that allows you to configure RAID devices on local media;
- Supports Cisco UCS VIC interface cards directly, allows you to configure the final Ethernet network interfaces and FCoE (nic, fnic) connections in LAN (L2 layer) / SAN without having to boot the operating system.