SOL White Paper

2. Overview of SOL
SOL is based on RMCP (Remote Management and Control Protocol) request-response protocol
delivered using UDP to port 623. SOL needs firmware running on the Baseboard Management
Controller (BMC), and client software running on a management workstation and/or central network
proxy to work.
The BMC firmware is responsible for controlling the serial hardware MUX, the transformation of serial
data to and from network packets, and the transmission and reception of SOL network packets
through the NIC port.
A remote SOL client is responsible for initiating the SOL session with the BMC and transformation of
console input and output through network packets as shown in Figure 1.
To allow access to Telnet style programs, primary SOL services are implemented as a background
network task. Throughout this document, this task will be referred to as the Network Proxy. The
network proxy can run on individual management workstations, or may be a centralized service that
can be used by any management workstation.
Intel offers this network proxy or “SOL Proxy” through a utility called “DPCCLI” and “DPCProxy”. This
can run on individual management workstations or may be a centralized service that can be used by
any management workstation. “Telnet” is used as a client program to connect to the proxy where the
SOL data is displayed.
The other commonly used tool is the IPMITool (http://ipmitool.sourceforge.net/
) from Open source
community which runs as a standalone utility that can connect to the firmware running on BMC and
perform SOL.
3. Architectural Components
Figure 1. SOL Communication Stack
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