BMC redundancy

[Vernon Mauery]

On 29-Jan-2018 10:52 AM, Brad Bishop wrote:
>I know we have a lot of work to do with the basics before tackling something
>like supporting multiple BMCs in a single system, but its never too early to
>brainstorm.
>
>Quick community poll:  Please share any thoughts you may have around supporting
>systems with multiple BMCs.  Does your organization care?  Thoughts on how it
>could/should be done?  System designs that are a non-starter for OpenBMC?

Intel has supported systems like this in the past, and it is likely that 
we will have need of multi-node/multi-bmc systems in the future.

Our systems in the past have been sled-based with four sleds (BMC+host) 
per chassis and the BMCs connected via I2C over the backplane.  One of 
the BMCs was elected (based on availability and ID) to be the master for 
the system to control the shared resources (power supplies and other 
common stuff). 

Each BMC was individually accessible in the normal ways (KCS from host 
or RMCP/web over the network).

Is this the sort of stuff that you are looking for or were you thinking 
of BMC redundancy for a single system?

--Vernon