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 Provide steps to build the OEM FRU data structure

 Provide commands to read and write the OEM FRU onto a server

 Provide commands to edit the OEM FRU on the fly

 Provide the recommended factory deployment workflow

 Discuss additional use cases for leveraging the OEM FRU

PREREQUISITES

The OEM FRU storage feature is a capability of the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller or iDRAC service processor and is

available on 13G+ servers shipping with an iDRAC firmware level of 2.40.40.40 or later.

The OEM FRU capability is a Premium tier feature of Dell EMC Identity Module (ID Module) and requires an OEM engagement to build

and deploy. Details on the steps involved in enabling the OEM FRU storage feature within ID Module are described in a later section.

Visit www.dellyourid.com for more details on ID Module.

Considering that the FRU area is a binary payload, it is not trivial to build the content structure by hand. In order to simplify the effort for

OEM customers, a Python tool is provided to speed up the process of creating the payload. This tool can be downloaded from Dell

Tech Center here. The FRU tool has been tested with Python version 2.7 and 3.5 which can be downloaded and installed from

www.python.org.

In order to write, read or edit the OEM FRU storage area, the open source IPMItool utility is required. This utility can be installed on

Linux distributions by using the built-in package manager such as yum or apt-get. Dell provides a Windows version which can be found

in the Driver and Downloads section for any PowerEdge server on Dell Support under the Systems Management section. It is contained

in the package named Dell OpenManage BMC Utility which can also be found on Google by searching for the package by name. For

documentation on IPMItool, search for “man ipmitool” on Google.

OVERVIEW

The OEM FRU follows the standard structure for an FRU information area as defined by Intel. This specification documents the

Platform Management FRU Information Storage Definition and was originally released in 1998. It was last updated in 2013 to v1.2 as

linked above.

Each OEM can choose to customize field lengths and extend Internal Area, for example, but is generally expected to leverage the

standard structure. In order to describe the structure, some portions of Platform Management FRU Information Storage Definition are

captured here for convenience.

The FRU has the following defined areas:

 Common Header

 Internal Area

 Chassis Info Area

 Board Info Area

 Product Info Area

 MultiRecord Area

The most relevant area for a typical OEM customer would be the Product Info Area.