BIOS User Guide February 2019
Notes, cautions, and warnings NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your product. CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid the problem. WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death. © 2019 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. Dell, EMC, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Contents 1 About this guide............................................................................................................................................. 4 Information symbols...........................................................................................................................................................4 Document revision history............................................................................................................................................
1 About this guide This guide provides information for using the Dell EMC baseboard management controller (BMC). CAUTION: To avoid electrostatic discharge (ESD) damage, wear grounding wrist straps when handling this equipment. WARNING: Only trained and qualified personnel can install this equipment. Read this guide before you install and power up this equipment. This equipment contains two power cords. Disconnect both power cords before servicing.
2 New in this release DIAG tools new features. DIAG OS Version VEP4600_DIAG_OS_3.41.3.81-4 New Features: 1 Support for Wifi/LTE/BT diagnostics. 2 Support for eepromtool for rNDC Carrier Card and WIFI/LTE card FRU (Field-replaceable unit). 3 Support for MC1/MC2 BT firmware update. 4 Support for LED of WiFI. Can turn off/on using iwconfig wlan0 txpower off/on. DIAG Tools Version VEP4600_DIAG_OS_3.41.3.
3 BIOS WARNING: Changing the BIOS may be detrimental to platform operations if the changes are not fully understood. Before you change the BIOS, if you have questions, contact your Dell EMC technical representative. For the most current BIOS update information, see the VEP4600 Release Notes. Topics: • BIOS setup • Console redirection • Hardware flow control • Super IO configuration • Boot order • Server management • Option ROM dispatch policy • SR-IOV support • USB 3.
Figure 3. BIOS setup Console redirection On the VEP4600, all output is through COM0, which is the console redirection default setting. The BIOS provides options to override the COM0 port default settings, including speed, parity setting, and so forth. Access the COM0 settings from the BIOS setup screen, select the Advanced tab, then select Serial Port Console Redirection.
Figure 4. Console redirection Hardware flow control Hardware flow control is not enabled on the console port by default. Follow the steps below in BIOS settings to enable the hardware flow control for the console port. 1 Select the Boot menu tab. Boot into the BIOS settings using the up and down arrow keys.
Figure 5. BIOS main screen 2 Select Advanced then COM0 (Console Redirection Settings) and Hardware RTS/CTS in the Flow Control popup menu.
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
Figure 8. Hardware RTS/CTS 3 Press F4 to save and exit BIOS. Super IO configuration The VEP4600 only has the serial port on the Super I/O (SIO) chip. The chip settings are preconfigured and normally do not need changing. However, you can use the BIOS to change the Super I/O chip settings, such as the I/O Base, interrupt request line (IRQ), and direct memory access (DMA) channel. To access these settings, from the BIOS setup screen, select the Advanced tab, then select SIO Configuration.
Figure 9. Super I/O configuration Figure 10.
Boot order The BIOS looks for a bootable image in the Boot order setting order list. The BIOS then loads and boots the image. To access the boot order setting, from the BIOS setup screen, select the Boot tab, then select Boot Option Priorities. Figure 11. Boot order Server management VEP4600 has an on-board baseboard management controller (BMC) to monitor system health.
Figure 12. Server management After an event, the BIOS logs a message to the BMC. The BMC stores these messages in nonvolatile storage. Apart from the BIOS, health monitoring software and system software also logs messages to the BMC system event log (SEL). View these messages from the BIOS setup screen, select the Server Mgmt tab, then select View System Event Log. Figure 13.
You can add, delete, access, or modify user rights. Manage the BMC user account from the BIOS setup screen, select the Server Mgmt tab, then select BMC User Settings. Figure 14. BMC user settings Option ROM dispatch policy Option read-only memory (ROMs) contain firmware that the BIOS executes. The values listed on this screen and in the Compatibility Support Module screen use default values when the Restore if Failure setting is true and the BIOS fails to boot up.
Access this option from the BIOS setup screen, select the Advanced tab, then select PCI Subsystem Settings. If a device supports virtual functions, you must enable SR-IOV support in the BIOS. Figure 16. SR-IOV support USB 3.0 To support universal serial bus (USB) 3.0 in operating systems, set the extensible host controller interface (xHCI) XHCI Hand-off option to enabled. Access this setting from the BIOS setup screen, select the Advanced tab, then select USB Configuration. If the BIOS must support USB 2.
The BIOS also supports hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) boot. Use both HTTP and PXE boot over IPv4 or IPv6. Figure 18. PXE and HTTP boot support Network interface configuration VEP4600 has two 10GbE small form-factor pluggable plus (SPF+) ports, four Gigabit ports, and one Gigabit management port. The BIOS uses these ports for PXE boot. You can configure the wake on LAN setting. You can also configure the one Gigabit port to auto configure or set to a specific speed.
Figure 19. Network interface options Advanced power management Access the settings for power management from the BIOS setup screen, then select the Socket Configuration tab. On the Advanced Power Management Configuration screen, select Memory Power & Thermal Configuration. By default, SpeedStep(P states) and Autonomous Core C-State are disabled. The Software controlled T-States option is also disabled by default.
Figure 20. Advanced power management options Trusted computing The BIOS provides options to enable or disable trusted platform module (TPM) security. BIOS has two provision coverage ratio (PCR) banks and provides options to select SHA-1 or SHA256 for these banks. Access the TPM settings from the BIOS setup screen, then select the Advanced tab, then select Trusted Computing BIOS settings.
Figure 21. Trusted computing options Embedded DIAGS Embedded DIAGS are available in BIOS 3.41.0.9-13, DIAG_OS_3.41.3.81-4 release. Embedded DIAGS in the BIOS validates and verifies all the system's components are operating nominally. System diagnostics include: 1 PSU 2 Fan 3 I2C 4 RTC/CMOS 5 PCI 6 DIMM 7 IPMI 8 Storage 9 Critical Device 10 Temperature NOTE: See uCPE Networking DIAG OS Guide for details at https://www.dell.com/support.
4 Dell EMC support The Dell EMC support site provides documents and tools to help you effectively use Dell EMC equipment and mitigate network outages. Through the support site you can obtain technical information, access software upgrades and patches, download available management software, and manage your open cases. The Dell EMC support site provides integrated, secure access to these services. To access the Dell EMC support site, go to www.dell.com/support/.
