IPMI and SNMP – Understanding Location and Functionality

snmp

I have a question that is basically clarification of concepts:

I know IPMI "…provides management and monitoring capabilities…" [copy/paste from wiki]

And SNMP "…exposes management data in the form of variables on the managed systems, which describe the system configuration…." [also copy/paste from wiki]

After studying IPMI for a while, it seems that it can exist in a layer very close to the hardware, making it independent of O.S.

On the other hand, SNMP runs in a more "higher level", much closer to the O.S.

My understand is that: Both provide machine information, but IPMI will work independent of anything (like O.S.). While SNMP is just a way for the O.S. to expose machine information where it is sitting on.

Is the above statement correct? Or am I completely mistaken and I need better understand of both concepts? If that's the case, would you care to clarify?

Best Answer

If you read your IPMI article carefully, you will see that IPMI is primarily used for PCs and servers, and it is a specification for out-of-band management of a system. IPMI also requires specialized hardware.

On the other hand, SNMP is a software specification which is used across a wide variety of hardware, usually in the OS, and it is primarily used in-band. SNMP can be set to send traps to an SNMP server, or it can be polled by an SNMP server or application.