Dedicated Servers with IPMI Access

The four operations that IPMI gives you, in rough order of how often you'll use them:

• Power control: Hard reset, graceful shutdown, power on/off. Not gated by OS state. The server is unresponsive? Hit reset from the web panel and watch it reboot in 30 seconds.
• Console (HTML5 KVM-over-IP): Full graphical console in your browser. See the BIOS, GRUB menu, OS boot messages, kernel panics, login prompt. Type as if you were sitting at the keyboard.
• Virtual media (ISO mount): Upload or URL-mount an ISO file. Server boots from it as if you inserted a CD. This is how you reinstall a custom OS (Proxmox, ESXi, custom Linux, NetBSD, etc.) without our intervention.
• BIOS / firmware access: Change boot order, enable virtualization extensions, tune RAM timings, update BIOS firmware, change RAID controller config. All from the web console.

Combined, these turn 'I locked myself out of SSH' from a ticket-and-wait into a 5-minute fix.

The IPMI implementation depends on the server hardware:

• Supermicro (most of our SMC-X11/X12 generation): SMC IPMIView. HTML5 KVM works in modern browsers. Default credentials are reset to your account ID at provision time and emailed.
• Dell PowerEdge (R730/R740/R750): iDRAC 8 or 9. Better-than-average web UI. iDRAC Enterprise license included on all our Dell hardware (gives you virtual media, full KVM, and SSH-to-iDRAC).
• HPE ProLiant (DL360/DL380 G9/G10): iLO 4 or iLO 5. Full Advanced license included.
• Custom whitebox (some older inventory): generic IPMI 2.0 with Java console fallback. We try to keep these out of new orders but call out the model on the order page if applicable.

All IPMI traffic is restricted to a private management VLAN you access via VPN or jump host. We don't expose IPMI directly to the public internet — recurring CVEs in vendor firmware make that unsafe.

All dedicated server plans (not VPS) include IPMI 2.0 access at no extra cost. Common configurations:

• Dedicated Starter — $89/mo: Intel Xeon E3-1230v6, 32 GB ECC, 2x 1 TB NVMe, IPMI 2.0 (Supermicro IPMIView).
• Dedicated Pro — $129/mo: AMD EPYC 7402P (24c/48t), 64 GB ECC, 2x 2 TB NVMe, IPMI 2.0 + virtual media.
• Dedicated Enterprise — $199/mo: Dual EPYC 7543, 256 GB ECC, 4x 4 TB NVMe RAID 10, full iDRAC/iLO Enterprise license.

VPS plans don't include IPMI (it's a hardware-level feature). For VPS, our web panel provides VNC console access which fills the same role for non-bare-metal customers.

Examples of what people actually use IPMI for, end-to-end:

• Install Proxmox VE on bare metal: Upload Proxmox ISO via virtual media, set boot order to virtual CD, reboot, follow installer in HTML5 console. ~20 minutes.
• Recover from broken SSH config: Open KVM console, log in as root via password (or via single-user mode if password is broken too), fix /etc/ssh/sshd_config, restart sshd.
• BIOS firmware update: Download .bin from vendor, upload via IPMI web panel, schedule update, server auto-reboots. No physical access needed.
• Custom kernel boot loop debugging: Watch GRUB and kernel messages live in the console as the server boots. Pick alternate kernel from GRUB menu if needed.
• Encrypted disk unlock: Server with full-disk encryption requires passphrase entry on each boot. IPMI console lets you enter it remotely.

Documentation for each vendor's IPMI is linked from the customer panel after provisioning.