[c-nsp] best way to network servers with management (iLO/IPMI)

[Drew Weaver]

Hi there,

I am trying to come up with the best way to network servers that have out-of-band management such as the baseboard management controllers in many enterprise servers.

Ideally, I would like to be able to assign the management device a RFC 1918 IP, have the actual server be on a different subnet altogether but use a shared port. I know that BMCs generally can use VLAN tagging, but I'm really not sure how I can do all of this with just one port.

The 'easy' way is to simply assign a dedicated NIC to the management device and run another cable, but I'm not sure that is the best way to do it.

Does anyone have any experience handling the networking side of large server deployments of servers with management capabilities?

thanks,
-Drew