Though workstations are a mainstay of several industries that require high compute power for technical tasks, including engineering, architecture, and data science, the way they are being used is changing — moving from the traditional desk-based environment to a centralized data center. This shift addresses the needs of both users who require the power and performance of a workstation and IT departments that must reduce costs while maintaining security and maximizing productivity for a decentralized workforce. Though increasing security and productivity has always been a concern, remote work has accelerated the need for reliable remote data management.
“More and more organizations are realizing that they want the power of the workstation, and the flexibility of the cloud. Lenovo ThinkStation BMC completes this vision, providing full out-of-band-management to Lenovo ThinkStations in the Datacenter, combining maximum performance with simple management.”
Manage Data Wherever Your Workday Leads You
To help address this need, Lenovo has made available ThinkStation BMC, the industry’s first true add-in out-of-band management solution, to a portfolio of existing workstation products. Using this tool, IT administrators can perform tasks such as troubleshooting, configuration, and updates from remote locations, which reduces the time it takes to respond to issues that could disrupt business.
Lenovo ThinkStations for BMC are powered by Intel. They include the ThinkStation P3 Ultra with the blazingly-fast Intel® Core™ processors and Intel vPro®, and the ThinkStation P5 with the powerful Intel® Xeon® W-Series processor, the ThinkStation P7 powered by Intel® Xeon® W processors, and the ThinkStation PX with dual Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors.
For data center administrators who are already using BMC in their server environment, ThinkStation BMC is the final step in establishing a private workstation cloud. It helps users by eliminating latency, increasing productivity, and significantly reducing costs. ThinkStation BMC can integrate through third-party IT management applications such as Redfish APIs, IPMI 2.0, and HTML5 Web UI.
Here are some key areas where the ThinkStation BMC offers value.
Monitoring
Users can monitor system status and health, logging events, alerting, and sending notifications, including legacy ThinkStation Diagnostic codes. They also can remotely access system logs and capture Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) events. ThinkStation BMC also supports SNMP v2/v3 traps and can capture video when specific actions are triggered.
Management
ThinkStation BMC allows remote firmware updates for both BIOS and BMC. It enables remote control of power functions such as powering on, powering off, power cycling, performing a hard reset, and initiating an ACPI shutdown. Additionally, it features a virtual keyboard, video, and mouse graphic console (remote KVM) and supports serial-over-LAN for further control and management.
Provisioning
Users can gather system information and inventory. ThinkStation BMC also supports virtual media, including CD/DVD and hard disk, as well as HTTP/HTTPS, NFS, and CIFS protocols. It allows users to remotely deploy an operating system and network connectivity is flexible, with options for a dedicated port or a shared network port.
Security
ThinkStation BMC features FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption and allows users to generate, view, and upload certificates. It integrates with directory services, supporting Active Directory (AD) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). It also features role-based authority, IP blocking, and supports signed images for enhanced security.
“As more and more end-users have moved their physical Workstations from the deskside to the data center or other off-premises locations, the need for true lights-out remote manageability has significantly increased,” said Marc Pamley, Workstation Chief Technologist at Lenovo. “We have listened to our customers, and designed an add-in BMC solution that can provide enterprise-level management in the Workstation client for those who require it.”
Begin Your Remote Data Management Journey
Now is the time to start your remote data management journey. For more information about how Lenovo ThinkStations can help, visit Lenovo.com/workstations.