1. Across a system composed of racks of servers, MCTP gives the Web hosting IT administrator the ability to physically manage the servers without requiring root access which only the end user has. Here, the only medium available is out-of-band management.

2. On the rack server the baseboard management controller monitors entities such as fans, power supplies, sensors, etc. The controller communicates over a 1Gb Ethernet (1GbE) network, while the data network is 1GbE or 10GbE. The Web hosting IT administrator gets information about these management entities from the controller using out-of-band communication.

3. The rack server has I/O and storage protocols, such as 10GbE, Fibre Channel, SAS, but the Web hosting IT administrator gets no information about I/O and storage. Using MCTP, going over the PCIe or I2C bus, the controller now has out-of-band access to the I/O and storage on the rack server, allowing the Web hosting IT administrator access to remotely manage the servers.

Without MCTP, the I/O and storage monitoring was performed in-band using software agents installed on the system which incurred CPU overhead, impacted access to the information, and affected performance. MCTP reduces the CPU overhead without sacrificing any system management capabilities.

Designed correctly into a baseboard management controller MCTP is a critical component for remote system management. Server designers should consider including controllers that support MCTP, for their customers will greatly appreciate the flexibility and performance benefits. MCTP will help to maximize uptime, reduce costs and provide peace of mind for busy IT professionals.