All supermicro hardware?

[Island]

Are all the new dedicated servers all supermicro chasis + motherboard + powersupply?

Are they purchased as superservers from supermicro or are they assembled from supermicro components on site? (this is really out of curiosity, to be honest...)

Also how reliable is the supermicro IPMI/KVM over IP? Does it need to be nudged ever (yes my experience with dell's drac version hasn't been so great, which kind of defeats the purpose.) Can the supermicro IPMI/KVM be firewalled to allow access only from a specified IP or subnet?

[Karl]

Yes, every single server we offer, except for some of the discount servers, are full Supermicro systems. We use Supermicro hardware from Amadi Systems specifically because of the high reliability of Supermicro hardware. Since changing to Supermicro hardware we have had a significant reduction in power supply failures and are in general just huge fans.

[Island]

Awesome. Have had very good luck with the supermicro hardware myself for workstations (superservers). (still actually have one superserver running as a local firewall here 24/7/365 since 1996!!!)

(I added the IPMI question to my post above too; since it's included as free, it's not critical, but I'm curious. Also does the supermicro IPMI/KVM require any operating system drivers to function? )

[Karl]

The IPMI cards have been extremely reliable, once in a great while one might freeze, though that is extremely rare and is generally rectified with just a reset of the IPMI card or a reboot. The OS just sees it as a standard Keyboard, Mouse, and monitor, so no special rivers are needed. No, it cannot be firewalled.

[Karl]

Can the supermicro IPMI/KVM be firewalled to allow access only from a specified IP or subnet?

I hadn't commented on this specifically, but yes, you can limit the IPs with access to the IPMI card or set certain IPs to be outrightly blocked. You can also limit the number of failed attempts allowed, etc.