UCS C240 M4 without a CIMC

[rstforumindia]

Dear all,

I have just acquired a UCS B240 M4 from my organization for testing purposes. The server was initally marked as SMA 690 on the front but is marked clearly as a B240M4 from the inside. I am trying to configure the CIMC. This is what I have already tried.

1) On the boot screen at startup I CAN see a message that says CIMC IP Address as 0.0.0.0 along with its MAC address displayed at the bottom. But there is no Option to go to CIMC configuration Manager. I can see the following options.

Press F2 for setup. 

Press F6 for Boot Menu.

Press F7 for Diagnostics

Press F12 for Network boot.

but no option which says Press F8 for CIMC (Screenshot attached below. Sorry for the blurred image but readable)

2) There was a post on the community saying that there is an option to configure the CIMC IP Address via the serial port. 

But could not get any output. Below is the link i followed.

3) The BIOS setup itself also did not have any way to configure the IP Address. 

I was wondering why a server would show up a CIMC MAC Address but no way to configure it. Also is it possible that a server would not have CIMC ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Kirk J]

Sounds like the CIMC is malfunctioning.

I would go through the motions of doing F2 based CMOS reset., maybe pull CMOS (CR 2032) battery out for a few minutes.

There have been a few bugs that caused CIMC to have some internal IPMI issues, that kept it from responding at Post TIme, etc.

Maybe setup a notebook with wireshark, and hook direct connection (try both LAN 1, and the dedicated 1Gb mgmt port), and see if the CIMC is sending out DHCP requests, or already has an IP address assigned.

Kirk...

[vagish_dwivedi · Accepted solution]

 Dear Kirk,

Thanks for the reply. 

I did go on to try out everything mentioned. None of it seems to work. I did go on to do some research over the weekend. It seems that the SMA690 device was meant to host only the Email and Web security appliance. It seems that Cisco has completely locked down the server for security purposes. Which means no access to CIMC. No up-gradation of the firmware or bios. If I boot with anything else it gives me an error that says " Secure Boot Violation. Invalid signature detected. Check the secure boot policy in Setup. But the problem is Cisco site says once its enabled, it cannot be disabled.

Within the setup bios itself, the product is mentioned as SMA690. The PID VID is mentioned as M690 V01. Another thing is the board name in bios shows up as UCSC-240-M4S2.

I was assuming that even though the server was meant for ESA, if wanted to repurpose the server, for example, install vmware esxi, we could. but as of now, it seems that the server is entirely secured and no other OS or software can be installed. It may be for security purposes, but it seems that the server is now unusable.

Any other inputs would be appreciated.

[Kirk J · Accepted solution]

If the appliance allowed 'retasking' that would also allow compromise of the security OS/Suite installed on the appliance.

The secure boot restriction is there for a good reason, even if it does negate your reuse purposes.

Kirk...

[rstforumindia]

Thank you everybody for the inputs.