Infrastructure as a Service

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service

Join us to learn more from a community of collaborative experts and IBM Cloud product users to share advice and best practices with peers and stay up to date regarding product enhancements, regional user group meetings, webinars, how-to blogs, and other helpful materials.


#Cloud
#IBMCloud
#CloudInfrastructure
 View Only

  • 1.  Bare metal classic, IPMI partially functioning

    Posted yesterday

    Hi good afternoon,

    IBM did a DAL10 migration, and my bare metal drive did not survive (280 pending sectors).

    I've added some photos of the IPMI errors I'm now seeing.  Upon them replacing it, I'm having the issue with IPMI's KVM viewer not launching, and being unable to mount a remote image inside of it.

    My goal is to get this node restored to good health using a new FreeBSD 14.4-RELEASE installation.

    It seems like something IBM might be willing to help me with, but I cannot reach them by phone and they asked me to create a new ticket, which has gone unanswered, I understand they've made changes to their support tiers.

    If the IPMI is malfunctioning I was wondering what else can we try?  Should we flash the BMC to the latest Supermicro firmware?  Factory reset it?  I don't know if they want customers flashing it themselves, but I'm tempted to give it a shot since I can't reach anyone.

    I did see in the IBM documentation that IPMI is a supported method of installing an operating system, so I believe I am following their instructions.  I am also very comfortable with this operation and have done this successfully without issue in the past, and I manage other IPMI supermicro nodes without from the same laptop, so I do not believe my client side configuration or installation is malfunctioning here.  I would think this would be part of basic support, but perhaps I am wrong so I'm here to learn what I can do at IBM, as I don't know how to reach IBM now, and indications are that it is discouraged to be contacting them.

    Also wondering if there are simple alternate solutions or workarounds for this issue?  Traditionally in the world of dedicated servers I would expect to be able to pay for support a manual OS reload fee to just reload the OS with a traditional and reliable thumbdrive the old fashioned way - or, attach a empty thumbdrive to the system that can be used for administrative re-installation from the current OS.  I don't often need to install the OS to begin with, but without physical access to do it myself, I'm not sure what options are left for me here.

    Thanks,

    Josh



    ------------------------------
    Master User
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Bare metal classic, IPMI partially functioning

    Posted yesterday
    Edited by Stephanie Wing yesterday

    Hi! Thanks for reaching out! I checked with my Senior Technical Staff Member and he mentioned to switch to an HTML5 viewer vs a Java viewer in the Cloud Console. Have you tried that already? 

    In terms of IBM Support helping here - phone and chat tickets are not part of Basic Support packages unfortunately. Did you try reaching out to our DCOPS team and opening a ticket there? The IPMI might need to be reset. 



    ------------------------------
    Stephanie Wing
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Bare metal classic, IPMI partially functioning

    Posted 23 hours ago

    Hi Stephanie!  Thank you for getting back with me, I really appreciate it.

    The html5 viewer does work, but it does not have support for remote ISO mounting that the Java viewer has, so I cannot use it for this particular situation to bind/boot some installation media to the device.

    I personally suspect a bmc malfunction could be at play, and would wonder if DCOPS could check/reset the IPMI/BMC from the datacenter side, or verify Java KVM and virtual media functionality.

    Is that team reachable by me, or only by IBM staff?  I don't see it as a drop down in the "technical issue" create case screen  and my existing ticket remains open/unanswered for 12 hours.  I don't want to clutter/bother them with multiple tickets, but, I'd like to get this solved so I can bring this system back into service.



    ------------------------------
    Master User
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Bare metal classic, IPMI partially functioning

    Posted 20 hours ago
    Edited by Master User 20 hours ago

    One possible workaround I was considering is ordering a second disk installed to boot from it directly - but I discovered IBM has a password lock on both the boot menu, and on the BIOS - so I wouldn't be able to write an image to a 2nd disk and boot from it using the html5/kvm viewer without IBM providing me the password, even if there was local boot media.

    I think I really do need to talk to someone for this, it should be pretty simple to get past this, but I don't see a path for me to get past this without IBM.



    ------------------------------
    Master User
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Bare metal classic, IPMI partially functioning

    Posted 8 hours ago
    Edited by Stephanie Wing 8 hours ago

    Can you please provide your account ID and client name? Please email at smwing@us.ibm.com. That would be helpful, so I can have the team look into this for you. Thank you so much!



    ------------------------------
    Stephanie Wing
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Bare metal classic, IPMI partially functioning

    Posted 7 hours ago

    Sure, I have sent an email over, thank you for your help and reviewing this with me, I really appreciate it.



    ------------------------------
    Master User
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


Related Content