IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter

Remote supervisor adapter (RSA) is the out-of-band management interface card optional on most IBM x86 -based server machines sold under the IBM System x brand.

Remote management is independent of the status of the managed server.

This is a full-length ISA or PCI adapter. The ISA version is very rare, and was only ever supported in one or two servers. This adapter can be accessed either in-band through a device driver, or out-band over serial or 10Mbit Ethernet.

In addition, this adapter supports chaining of IBM Servers with Advanced Systems Management Processors (ASMP) using RJ45 patch cables (RS-485 signal), to reduce the number of adapters required. A total of 12 systems can be controlled this way using a single adapter.

The PCI version is supported under Linux through the ibmasm driver.

Supported servers:

This is a half-length PCI adapter, which can be accessed either in-band through a device driver, or out-band over serial or Ethernet.

In addition, this adapter supports the chaining of IBM Servers with Integrated Systems Management Processors (ISMP) using RJ45 patch cables (RS-485 signal), to reduce the number of adapters required.

The adapter is supported under Linux through the ibmasm driver.

This is the first version to support remote KVM over Ethernet. But when chaining is used, only the server with the adapter installed supports the remote KVM function.

Supported servers:

This is a half-length full-height PCI adapter, which can be accessed either in-band through a device driver, or out-band over serial or Ethernet.

In addition, this adapter supports chaining of IBM Servers with Integrated Systems Management Processors (ISMP) using RJ45 patch cables (RS-485 signal), to reduce the number of adapters required.

This adapter (when properly cabled) can be accessed for in-band management through a USB driver.

This adapter has its own ATI video chip, and will cause the onboard video chip to get disabled. The reason for this was to resolve some of the problems with capturing the video for the remote KVM function that the original RSA experienced. Just like the original RSA, in the event of chaining the remote KVM function is only supported on the server with the adapter installed.

Supported servers:

The RSA-II requires a 20-pin cable to attach to the motherboard of the server. Without this cable the remote video facilities will still work, and if the external USB cable is connected, the remote keyboard and mouse will work—but nothing else (including power control) will function properly. Moreover, some servers will pause for 30–120 seconds after power-on if the RSA-II is installed but the cable is missing.

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