Technical product specification

Intel® Server Board S2600CP and Intel® Server System P4000CP Platform Management

Intel

Server Board S2600CP and Server System P4000CP TPS

Revision 1.8

Intel order number G26942-005

6.4.3.4.1 Baseboard NICs

The specific Ethernet controller (NIC) used on a server is platform-specific but all baseboard

device options provide support for an NC-SI manageability interface. This provides a sideband

high-speed connection for manageability traffic to the BMC while still allowing for a

simultaneous host access to the OS if desired.

The Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI) is a DMTF industry standard protocol for the

side band management LAN interface. This protocol provides a fast multi-drop interface for

management traffic.

The baseboard NIC(s) are connected to a single BMC RMII/RGMII port that is configured for

RMII operation. The NC-SI protocol is used for this connection and provides a 100 Mb/s full-

duplex multi-drop interface which allows multiple NICs to be connected to the BMC. The

physical layer is based upon RMII, however RMII is a point-to-point bus whereas NC-SI allows 1

master and up to 4 slaves. The logical layer (configuration commands) is incompatible with

RMII.

Multi-port baseboard NICs on some products will provide support for a dedicated management

channel than can be configured to be hidden from the host and only used by the BMC. This

mode of operation is configured by a BIOS setup option.

6.4.3.4.2 Dedicated Management Channel

An additional LAN channel dedicated to BMC usage and not available to host SW is supported

by an optional add-in card. There is only a PHY device present on the add-in card. The BMC

has a built-in MAC module that uses the RGMII interface to link with the card’s PHY. Therefore,

for this dedicated management interface, the PHY and MAC are located in different devices.

The PHY on the card connects to the BMC’s other RMII/RGMII interface (that is, the one that is

not connected to the baseboard NICs). This BMC port is configured for RGMII usage.

In addition to the use of an add-in card for a dedicated management channel, on systems that

support multiple Ethernet ports on the baseboard, the system BIOS provides a setup option to

allow one of these baseboard ports to be dedicated to the BMC for manageability purposes.

When this is enabled, that port is hidden from the OS.

6.4.3.4.3 Concurrent Server Management Use of Multiple Ethernet Controllers

Provided the HW supports a management link between the BMC and a NIC port, the BMC FW

supports concurrent OOB LAN management sessions for the following combination:

 Two on-board NIC ports

 One on-board NIC and the optional dedicated add-in management NIC.

 Two on-board NICs and optional dedicated add-in management NIC.

All NIC ports must be on different subnets for the above concurrent usage models.

MAC addresses are assigned for management NICs from a pool of up to 3 MAC addresses

allocated specifically for manageability. The total number of MAC addresses in the pool is

dependent on the product HW constraints (for example, a board with 2 NIC ports available for

manageability would have a MAC allocation pool of 2 addresses).For these channels, support

can be enabled for IPMI-over-LAN and DHCP.

For security reasons, embedded LAN channels have the following default settings: