Management Software for Out-of-Band Connections

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Typically, you use terminal emulation software on the management computer to connect to and communicate with a server through an out-of-band connection. The two most common methods are the following:

  • Use Telnet — or a secure alternative such as SSH — to connect to a terminal concentrator through an in-band connection, which then connects to the server through an out-of-band connection.

  • Use HyperTerminal to connect directly to the server.

If you use a service processor, it might require specific software to work with it and to interact with Emergency Management Services. For example, manufacturers might provide a Web browser or custom software.

Make sure that the terminal emulation software you use supports serial port and terminal definition settings that are compatible with Emergency Management Services, as well as with your service processor or system firmware. If possible, use terminal emulation software that supports the VT-UTF8 protocol because VT-UTF8 support for Unicode provides for multilingual versions of Windows. If English is the only language you need to support, the VT100+ terminal definition is sufficient. At minimum, you can use the VT100 definition, but this terminal definition requires that you manually enter escape sequences for function keys and so forth. For more information about terminal definitions and what they support, see the Storage Technologies Collection of the Windows Server 2003 Technical Reference (or see the Storage Technologies Collection on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit). For more information about the VT-UTF8 terminal definition, see the Emergency Management Services Design link on the Web Resources page at https://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources.

If your hardware and firmware use the same terminal definition settings that Emergency Management Services uses, you can always use the same escape sequences for managing computers, regardless of what is controlling the port — hardware, firmware, or Emergency Management Services. If you use different terminal types, the escape sequences you need to use vary depending on what is controlling the serial port, making it difficult to determine the appropriate sequence to send.