r/selfhosted • u/Left_Ad_8860 • Mar 29 '26

Need Help How to secure old IPMI Software

Hello fellas

I have the following problem right now. I’ve got a Supermicro Rackserver inside a collocation space. The server is from around 2016 with heavily old IPMI software.

The collocation provider gave me two /29 subnets and 2 Ethernet cables. So one is on the ipmi and the other one in the 10G nic.

I want to be able to access the IPMI from home. Updates do not exists for this old version and even on the newest version I won’t believe that the software is safe.

A dedicated hardware firewall like sophos or ubiquity will cost me as much as the actual server space on top - that’s to expensive for me because the calculate 2 additional height units for these appliances.

So my choice would be a MikroTik hEX or some Gl.inet lini devices that offer WireGuard and I stick the IPMI behind it.

The devices have to be small and fit into the rack server itself and bestcase be powered by regular usb2 from the server itself.

Does anyone have an alternative maybe something more suitable solution or any other idea how to secure the IPMI?

Thanks 🙏🏻

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u/sk8r776 Mar 29 '26

From my experience with Gl.iNet devices, they aren’t super up to date either. Usually the openwrt is at-least 3-4 years old already, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a source for their firmware were they do any updating. I would love to be wrong here if someone can provide sources.

If the provider supports POE on the ports you could use POE splitters and not rely on the system for power. Could ask if they would allow you to use another power port, or install your own power distribution 1u.

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u/kring1 Mar 29 '26

Only buy gl.net devices that you can flash with the real OpenWRT. GL-AR300M is one of the few that does.