RIB vs ILO

[Pike_1]

Is there any difference between RIB card and ILO?

[David Claypool]

Just to make sure exactly what you mean when you say "RIB," which product do you mean? "RIB" generally refers to the Remote Insight Board which had generations in EISA and PCI busses. In 1999, the RIB/PCI was replaced by the Remote Insight Lights-Out Edition, commonly referred to as RILOE. There now is a RILOE II board.

RILOE II and iLO are very similar. Both provide graphical remote console, virtual media, optional LDAP authentication, logging and other things. There are 2 main differences between the two:

RILOE II uses the fact that it has more memory and is able to record power-on and failure sequences for replay. In other words, let's say for example that you're trying to figure out why a server is working fine but didn't connect to the SAN and you can't even see the HBA. You could replay the POST sequence and see that the HBA had an error initializing.

Secondly, while both RILOE II and iLO have an interactive Virtual Media capability for floppy and CD, RILOE II, again because of extra memory, the RILOE II also has the ability to have a floppy image inserted into its memory and present it to the host like a physical device.

Other than that, most differences are cosmetic, and few customers who buy a server with iLO opt to install a RILOE II card instead.