Vital Product Data (VPD) is a collection of configuration and informational data associated with a particular set of hardware or software. VPD stores information such as part numbers, serial numbers, and engineering change levels. Not all devices attached to a system will provide VPD, but it is often available from

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Pro ...

and

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

devices.

Parallel ATA Parallel ATA (PATA), originally , also known as IDE, is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. The connection ...

and

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

devices also provide similar data, but do not refer to it as VPD. VPD data is typically burned onto

EEPROM EEPROM (also called E2PROM) stands for electrically erasable programmable read-only memory and is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers, usually integrated in microcontrollers such as smart cards and remote keyless systems, or as a ...

s associated with various hardware components, or can be queried through attached

I2C I, or i, is the ninth letter and the third vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''i'' (pronounced ), plural ...

buses. It is used by

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...

(for example,

OpenFirmware Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems, where it was known as OpenBoot, and has bee ...

) to determine the nature of the system hardware, and to shield the operation of the firmware from minor changes and variations of hardware implementations within a given machine model number.

AIX

In IBM's

AIX operating system AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , "ay-eye-ex") is a series of Proprietary software, proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Background Originally released for the ...

, VPD also refers to a subset of database tables in the

Object Data Manager AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , "ay-eye-ex") is a series of Proprietary software, proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Background Originally released for the ...

(ODM) obtained from either the Customized VPD object class or platform specific areas, therefore the VPD and ODM terms are sometimes referred to interchangeably. command can be used in AIX to get the VPD.

lscfg  v p s l Name/code>  

 Other Unix-like systems

Package dmidecode provides commands vpddecode, biosdecode, and dmidecode, which can display hardware Vital Product Data. This package is available for many Unix-like operating systems.

 See also

* Organizationally unique identifier
*World Wide Name 
A World Wide Name (WWN) or World Wide Identifier (WWID) is a unique identifier used in storage technologies including Fibre Channel, Parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI and  Serial Attached SCSI (SAS).

A WWN may be employed in a variety of roles, such  ...


 References



 Further reading

* ''PCI System Architecture'' (PC System Architecture Series), 10 Jun 1999, MindShare Inc., Tom Shanley, Don Anderson, 

 Identifiers
 IBM operating systems

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