How do you manage your IPMI etc. credentials?

[Andrew_Carr]

Thought I'd throw this out there to see if there's a better way to do things. I've slowly been getting into server hardware and it's a completely different world in terms of complexity. IPMI and remote troubleshooting and management features are great but just adds yet another layer of complexity. It looks like newer motherboards no longer have ADMIN / ADMIN as IPMI defaults and now come with randomized values. Changing them is an involved process but luckily most seem to have the password on a sticker on the motherboard now, but in terms of controlling all of this chaos what's a good way to do it?

This is for a small business so not only do I try to keep track of depreciation for each piece of equipment, but I also have to consider potential resale and on-going support if something goes wrong. So how does everyone manage stuff like this? I've been a fan of keepass for awhile for personal passwords but it's kind of tedious to record everything.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Keep the OEM username and password associated with the sticker on the motherboard. Use that account to create another account with the same permissions. Set this new account to whatever password you like. If you use password management software, stick this new account's credentials in whatever management package you use. For a small business, you can just remember the credentials - and even if you forget, you can use the OEM account to reset them.

 

[Andrew_Carr]

Keep the OEM username and password associated with the sticker on the motherboard. Use that account to create another account with the same permissions. Set this new account to whatever password you like. If you use password management software, stick this new account's credentials in whatever management package you use. For a small business, you can just remember the credentials - and even if you forget, you can use the OEM account to reset them.

Thanks, didn't know you could do that. That would definitely simplify things.

 

[toast0]

Last time I messed with IPMI passwords, you could use tools in the host OS to set/reset the IPMI accounts (without needing to have correct IPMI credentials). Doing that as part of system setup might be an option?

For personal use, if I wasn't too cheap to get IPMI, I'd set everything to the same password as my luggage (and the access points etc network equipment), but at a business, I'd want to disable default accounts and have unique ipmi passwords if management is feasible. You don't want someone breaking in and then figuring out how to get into the consoles of everything.