Server Management Guide
Scenarios and Best Practices
100 Intel
®
Server Boards and Server Platforms Server Management Guide
to the range and limits being different for each wattage power supply so it is recommended that an
update be done to set the correct limits.
On Intel
®
server boards with the Intel
®
5500/5520 Chipset the SDR should be updated when replacing
the processors with ones that have dramatically different thermal characteristic the Fan Speed Control
curves will be affected. Therefore, it is best to update the SDR. There are 3 different processor types
that are looked for when doing an SDR update:
Intel
®
Xeon
®
Processor 5500
Intel
®
Xeon
®
Processor 5600
Intel
®
Xeon
®
Processor 5600 130 watt
Except for the exceptions that were just listed, the following are some examples of when you would not
need to update the SDR:
When replacing a device with one of the same type.
When adding DIMM modules. (For this, the BMC should dynamically adjust the fans speed
control).
When adding a Hard Disk Drive
When adding PCI adapters (except for those noted previously).
5.6.4 After updating the SDR?
After the SDR has been updated it is a good practice to verify that that all of the installed devices were
seen. This would include the processors, power supplies, fans, IO Risers, IO Module, Mezzanine
Modules, and General Purpose Graphic Processor Unit (GPGPU). There are a couple of options that
can be used to do this verification
Dump two identical systems and then compare the dumps between the systems to ensure that they
match.
Dump one system and browse through the devices listed. The names may be shortened versions of
the device. For example:
PS1 = Power Supply 1
P1 = Processor 1
HDD or Drv = Hard Disk Drive
The SDR file that comes as a part of the update package typically has useful notes for helping to
decode the various sensor names. Also check your Intel
®
Board Technical Product Specification to see
if it provides a list of sensors.
The dump itself can be done by using the Intel
®
FRUSDR utility, Intel
®
Sysinfo utility, or an open
source IPMI utility.
Example of dumping the SDR using FRUSDR
# FRUSDR /D SDR > File_Name_SDR.txt