[OmniOS-discuss] Supermicro IPMI based BIOS update

[wuffers]

Huh, I had recently updated all my servers' IPMI firmware as well as BIOS
recently, and didn't notice this new feature.

It's kind of interesting that they're trying to charge for it (at least
that's the assumption with an "activation key"). It's useful, but outside
of the "fix corrupted BIOS" (which would probably save themselves $$$), not
worth a premium. How hard is it to update the BIOS manually by hand
anyways?

I've just emailed my reseller about this, so I'll update this thread when I
get a response.


On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Paul B. Henson <henson at acm.org> wrote:

> This isn't strictly an illumos question, but supermicro kit is pretty
> popular for running illumos, so you guys are usually an excellent resource
> for questions like this :).
>
> I recently bought a supermicro X9SCL-F motherboard, which came with a new
> version of the IPMI firmware, 3.15. This version is also becoming available
> as an update for older boards, including my X9DRi-F. A new feature on this
> version of the IPMI web interface is allegedly the ability to update the
> BIOS completely hands-off.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems supermicro decided to make this a "value added"
> feature, so out-of-the-box all you see on that page is a request for an
> activation key :(.
>
> I've gone back and forth with supermicro technical support a bit, and
> gotten
> a reasonable grip on the technical details of the feature. Supposedly you
> can update the BIOS on a board that's not powered on and doesn't even have
> a
> CPU installed, which would be handy for those intervals where an updated
> processor has been released requiring a bios update, but boards are still
> being shipped with the old bios. They also say that unlike the boot to DOS
> installer, which always says you're required to completely remove power
> from
> the system and short the clear CMOS jumper, when updating the BIOS via the
> IPMI interface you don't need to do that. It also supposedly allows you to
> fix a corrupted BIOS that normally would require RMA'ing the board back to
> supermicro to reprogram, which is nice, I'm always nervous doing BIOS
> updates that I might brick the board and causing extensive downtime.
>
> As far as actually enabling the feature, they just tell me I should contact
> my reseller. I don't exactly buy a lot of volume :), so that would be
> somebody like Newegg, Amazon, Superbiiz... And so far they don't seem to
> have "IPMI BIOS update activation keys" available for sale.
>
> I was just curious if anybody else had looked at this, or possibly actually
> activated it, out of interest in the details of buying the feature as well
> as how well it worked out for anybody that's tried it.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>
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