Nowadays, it would be extremely difficult to find a household that does not store some form of media – whether it be movies, music, photos or documents – on their home computer. Understanding that, I can say with confidence that many of you have been away from home and suddenly had the desire (or need) to access the media for one reason or another.

Because the Internet has made content so much more accessible, it’s usually easy to log in remotely to your home PC using something like Remote Desktop, but what if your home computer is not powered on? You hope a family member is at home to turn on the computer when you call, but what if everyone is out of the house? Most people like me in the past would have just given up altogether since there would be no clear and immediate solution. Leaving your computer on all day could work, but what if you’re on an extended trip and you don’t want to run up your electricity bill? I’d probably start traveling with some portable storage device like a flash drive or portable hard drive to avoid the problem. This inelegant solution requires that I not forget the device, and the storage media would have to be large enough to contain all necessary files (and I’d also have to know ahead of time which ones I might need).

Given these alternatives, I usually found myself hoping for the best with the portable device, and as anticipated, there would still be some occasions where I didn’t happen to have the right files with me on that drive. When I started working for SoftLayer, I was introduced to a mind-blowing technology called IPMI, and my digital life has never been the same.

IPMI – Intelligent Platform Management Interface – is a standardized system interface that allows system administrators to manage and monitor a computer. Though this may be more than what the common person needs, I immediately found IPMI to be incredible because it allows a person to remotely power on any computer with that interface. I was ecstatic to realize that for my next computer build, I could pick a motherboard that has this feature to achieve total control over my home computer for whatever I needed. IPMI may be standard for all servers at SoftLayer, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a luxury feature.

If you’ve ever had the need to power on your computers and/or access the computer’s BIOS remotely, I highly suggest you look into IPMI. As I learned more and more about the IPMI technology, I’ve seen how it can be a critical feature for business purposes, so the fact that it’s a standard at SoftLayer would suggest that we’ve got our eye out for state-of-the art technologies that make life easier for our customers.

Now I don’t have to remember where I put that flash drive!

-Danny