Terminal Services; Virtual Media - HP AB500A - Integrated Lights-Out Advanced Technology Brief

Terminal Services

The iLO processor can use the OS functionality of Windows Terminal Services 3 to increase the
responsiveness of the graphical remote console. Terminal Services provide a software-based remote
console as long as the host OS is functioning normally. If the host OS is not functioning normally, the
iLO processor can revert to the iLO hardware-based remote console.
The iLO management processor accesses the Terminal Services application through the iLO pass-
through service (Figure 5). When the administrator requests a Terminal Services connection, the iLO
remote console applet activates the Terminal Services client application, which connects to iLO on the
host server. The iLO device passes all the Terminal Services traffic to the managed server and
completes the connection between the iLO browser and the Windows OS. The Remote Console client
can connect directly through iLO without requiring an additional iLO login step.
Because Terminal Services is OS-based, it has the primitives that tell the OS how to open a window,
the size and color of the window, and so on. Therefore, the Terminal Services application transmits
only small amounts of information across the network, which can improve the graphical remote
console performance.
Figure 5. This architectural diagram illustrates communication flow between the software–based remote console
and the host server.

Virtual media

The iLO processor provides virtual media by emulating USB devices to augment any existing storage
peripherals in the host server. For example, the virtual media device can be a physical floppy, USB
key, DVD or CD drive on the management workstation, or an image file stored on a local disk drive
or network drive. Booting from an iLO virtual device allows administrators to upgrade the host system
3 Terminal Services is available with Windows 2000 Server and later Windows operating systems.
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