Status Published Domain Out-of-band management | Year started 2010 Abbreviation NC-SI | |
Organization Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Base standards Platform Management Components Intercommunication (PMCI) | ||
NC-SI ("Network Controller Sideband Interface") is an electrical interface and protocol defined by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), which enables the connection of a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) to a set of Network Interface Controller (NICs) in server computer systems for the purpose of enabling out-of-band remote manageability.
Contents
Hardware interface
The NC-SI interface is based on the RMII interface with some modifications allowing connection of multiple network controllers to a single BMC. It contains the following signals:
Traffic types
NC-SI traffic can be either pass-through or control traffic, with both traffic types in form of Ethernet frames. Pass-through traffic consists of data exchanged between the BMC and the network via the NC-SI interface. Control traffic includes frames used to configure and control of the NC-SI interface and is identified by an EtherType of 0x88F8.
There are three types of control packets: