ASRock X470D4U board IPMI config misunderstanding

[Rajstopy]

Dear all,

I've installed a X470D4U board in my server which operates TrueNAS. This is a great board but I must admit that I'm totally lost about how to manage IPMI board...

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this board has 3 NIC : 1 IPMI NIC for management, and 2 other boards. My intention was to give one IP dedicated to IPMI board, and obviously 2 others for the remaining NIC (will be used by TrueNAS system).

When I installed the board, I provided the static .13 Ip to BMC board.
When I go to IPMI management interface under Settings / Network IP settings, I see the enclosed configuration section that I don't understand. I provided IP .13 (same as BMC board) but I think this is a mistake. Can I just uncheck the IPv4 check box? What it is for?
The 2 other NIC are managed by TrueNAS I don't understand why there is a possibility to assign IPs at this point. Just totally lost right now... Any advice would be really appreciated!

Cheers

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You don't need to set anything in the IPMI part of the TrueNAS UI. Just configure the IPMI out of band like you already did. That's the point - out of band access. Then use the remaining interfaces for TrueNAS.

No, I don't know, what the IPMI part of the UI is supposed to do, either.

 

[Ericloewe]

No, I don't know, what the IPMI part of the UI is supposed to do, either.

It's mostly there to help reconfigure the BMC in case you get locked out but still have access to the host.

 

[Rajstopy]

Many thanks to you guys for your answers!

Do you think that the fact I activated IPv4 on eth0 as indicated in the screenshot here enclosed can lead to a mess? I provided same IP .13 as in the BIOS. I notice some strange traffic on my switch, some ports going from disabled to forwarding, and I'm quite sure this is since I enabled this option...

 

[Rajstopy]

Never mind. Disabling IPv4 is just not possible. Seems to be exactly the same IP I entered at BIOS level.

At the end of the day, I don't understand again what is the purpose of eth0 and eth1 that you can choose there. There is one specific IPMI NIC on this board. To me, the 2 others are just the NIC to be used for TrueNAS. Totally lost again

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Just leave the IPMI settings alone as far as the TrueNAS UI is concerned and you will be good. I also got just weird error messages when toying with that in the past. Supermicro IPMI ...

 

[Arwen]

@Rajstopy - Some IPMI allow sharing a physical network connection, (but different IP), with the server side network ports. Saves switch ports. However, their are trade offs at times.

For example, my old Sun X2200 M2 had 4 x 1Gbps Ethernet ports, with Net1 being permanently shared with IPMI. But, the IPMI was only able to do 100Mbps and the server was able to do 1Gbps. So the switch port speed flapped back and forth if I was using both at the same time.

On the other hand, some Cisco servers I am working with, have 6 different network interfaces that the IPMI can be assigned. Plus, the IPMI can have 2 physical paths for redundancy...

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

On the other hand, some Cisco servers I am working with, have 6 different network interfaces that the IPMI can be assigned. Plus, the IPMI can have 2 physical paths for redundancy...

Nice ...

 

[Arwen]

Nice ...

It's actually more than "Nice"... When I first started supporting them, I could not find a DNS entry for the IPMI. So I walked over to the servers to see what connections were available. We have a mish-mash of remote consoles, (Sun, with service processors; Sun with LDOMs; Sun with Non-Global Zones...), so I thought these might be on *rappy network KVMs. Just needed to find out which one.

But these Cisco servers messed me up. They have 4 external cables. 2 power and 2 10Gbps network. So to fix my immediate problem, I used a KVM crash cart :-(.

Later I learned that these servers had 2 x 10Gbps UCS switches. So the IPMI goes through the 2 x 10Gbps Ethernet ports. UCS while at times strange, is quite usable. Nearest comparison is the IBM HMC for AIX LPARs.

If I remember correctly, their is a dedicated network port for the IPMI. Plus, at least 2 x 1Gbps network ports. None in use at our site.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

This with the switch built into the server looks like the real thing at a first glance. The common method of (optionally) piggybacking the IPMI on a regular network interface looks like a great idea until you move all servers to dual LACP and tagged VLAN ports. Then it's back to dedicated IPMI interfaces.