Is there a way to detect another host bmc alived via locl bmc?

Question

This is my topology:

                    +-------------------+
                    |                   |
          +---------+  ipmi switch      +----+
          |         |                   |    |
          |         +-------------------+    |
          |                                  |
          |                                  |
      +---+---+                          +---+---+
      |       |                          |       |
      |  bmc  |                          |  bmc  |
      |       |                          |       |
+-----+-------+----------+         +-----+-------+----------+
|                        |         |                        |
|                        |         |                        |
|                        |         |                        |
|       host1            |         |       host2            |
|                        |         |                        |
|                        |         |                        |
|                        |         |                        |
+-----+--------+---------+         +-----+--------+---------+
      |        |                         |        |
      |  mgmt  |                         |  mgmt  |
      |  nic   |                         |  nic   |
      +----+---+                         +----+---+
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |          +-------------------+   |
           |          |                   |   |
           +----------+  mgmt switch      +---+
                      |                   |
                      +-------------------+

Is there a way to detect bmc of host2 alive only via bmc of host1(via ipmi switch) not mgmt network(mgmt nic and mgmt switch)?

I searched man page of ipmitool and freeipmi but found nothing helpful

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 19 '19 at 21:39

Under the assumption that the "bmc" NICs only do IPMI traffic and no other traffic (i.e. no normal IP traffic), I don't believe there is a way for bmc-host1 to perform IPMI traffic to bmc-host2 to detect that it is up. Client side tools in ipmitool and freeipmi are effectively doing IP traffic to a bmc on the other side. So there needs to be a way to reach bmc-host2 with normal IP traffic.

Is there a way to detect another host bmc alived via locl bmc?

1 Answers1