IPMI Configuration to Setup FreeNAS

[Guinea]

I have a NAS I am building. The hardware is a supermicro chassis and a supermicro motherboard. I have a 16G USB stick with the FreeNAS iso (11) burned on it. I have a Samsung 120GB Evo 850 SSD for the boot drive. I want to use my PC to maintain and setup the FreeNAS installation. I was hoping to leverage IPMI, but I am not 100% familiar with how it works. I have the IPMI LAN connected to the switch, as well as the LAN1 connected to the switch. I power on the chassis, but I don't know how to get access to the server remotely. Everything I have read involved setting up IPMI through the BIOS, but that would require initially getting into the BIOS, which means I would need a monitor and keyboard plugged into the server initially. Is that correct or is there a default way to just get into IPMI and start the installation? I was hoping it was similar to a router (default IP, type it in the web browser, and access the BIOS and start up the KVM functionality so I can access FreeNAS installation).

Am I misunderstanding all of this?

 

[Chris Moore]

I have a NAS I am building. The hardware is a supermicro chassis and a supermicro motherboard. I have a 16G USB stick with the FreeNAS iso (11) burned on it. I have a Samsung 120GB Evo 850 SSD for the boot drive. I want to use my PC to maintain and setup the FreeNAS installation. I was hoping to leverage IPMI, but I am not 100% familiar with how it works. I have the IPMI LAN connected to the switch, as well as the LAN1 connected to the switch. I power on the chassis, but I don't know how to get access to the server remotely. Everything I have read involved setting up IPMI through the BIOS, but that would require initially getting into the BIOS, which means I would need a monitor and keyboard plugged into the server initially. Is that correct or is there a default way to just get into IPMI and start the installation? I was hoping it was similar to a router (default IP, type it in the web browser, and access the BIOS and start up the KVM functionality so I can access FreeNAS installation).

Am I misunderstanding all of this?

Not saying that's always true, but all the supermicro boards I've seen, ipmi was disabled. Well, not so much disabled as it didn't have an IP address configured. So you probably have to go in the BIOS with an actual keyboard mouse and monitor the first time and turn ipmi on so that it can get an IP address. I statically assign my IP address so that I always know what it's going to be instead of relying on DHCP to give it a dynamic address. After it has an IP address, then you can go to that IP address with a web browser to remote into it and from that point on you shouldn't need a keyboard mouse and monitor ever again

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Russell Coight]

For me IPMI was set to DHCP by default, do you know what IP address is assigned or are you able to find out? Check your router/DHCP server. Enter that IP into your browser and you're in. You haven't stated what motherboard you have so it will either rely on Java or if your motherboard supports it HTML5.

 

[danb35]

I power on the chassis, but I don't know how to get access to the server remotely.

Figure out the IP address for the IPMI interface. Use a network scanner app on your phone like Fing, use the DHCP status page of your router, etc. Or download IPMIView from SuperMicro and it will scan for it.

 

[Redcoat]

Yes, according to the manual for your mobo the default setting for the IPMI address is DHCP, so it'll be in your router's status pages as indicated above.

 

[Guinea]

For me IPMI was set to DHCP by default, do you know what IP address is assigned or are you able to find out? Check your router/DHCP server. Enter that IP into your browser and you're in. You haven't stated what motherboard you have so it will either rely on Java or if your motherboard supports it HTML5.

Bingo. It was assigned via DHCP. I did the installation of the FreeNAS via UEFI to the SSD. I rebooted and am having trouble getting it boot from the SSD now. I went in to BIOS and can't seem to find it as an option.

 

[Ericloewe]

It is confusing (Thanks, AMI! /s). My approach is to start by removing literally everything besides the one boot option you want. You may also have to check several different lists (SATA disks with BIOS, generic, UEFI devices, UEFI disks, ...).

 

[Inxsible]

It is confusing (Thanks, AMI! /s). My approach is to start by removing literally everything besides the one boot option you want. You may also have to check several different lists (SATA disks with BIOS, generic, UEFI devices, UEFI disks, ...).

I had the same thing happen to me with my AMI BIOS. There is a list in the Boot menu of the BIOS, but also in the Exit where the order is different and it would always pick my main drive to boot from after reboot even though I had the USB as the Option 1. I finally removed all boot options except the USB.

What fixed it was a BIOS update on my TYAN board. Now even when I have other boot options, the order I select sticks across system reboots. Maybe a BIOS update would help in your case too.