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Monday, May 14, 2018

Updating the IMPI and BIOS of a Supermicro X9 Motherboard

I have a 4 node Supermicro 6027TR-HTR (motherboards: X9DRT-HF) server, and I thought I needed to update IMPI and the BIOS for it. The following is a process for doing that, but there are multiple ways.

Supermicro SMT AETN X9 (there are many different versions, I've only verified this process on mine) IMPI update: 
  1. Hook an ethernet cable up to the IMPI LAN port and connect it to your computer.
  2. Boot server into BIOS (hit "DEL") 
  3. Go to IMPI tab and note down the IP address info. If it's set to DHCP, set it to static, and enter in the IP, subnet, and gateway (make sure you use 3 digits for each entry, so add extra 0's). If you had to change the IP info, save changes and reset (reboot). 
  4. On your computer, setup the ethernet to work with the static IP info that you just noted down from the server. You'll need to set an IP on the same subnet, use the same subnet and gateway.
  5. Go to a browser on your computer and type in the static IP. The IMPI login screen should show up. Log in with the username and password. The default is ADMIN/ADMIN. 
  6. Now you should see the browser interface for your server. You can do lots of things with this, but the thing we want to do is update the IMPI firmware.
  7. Go to your supermicro motherboard's web page and download the most current SMT or IMPI firmware. In this zip, there should be instructions for your operating system. For mine, there was a word document with pictures of how to use the browser to update the firmware. The following steps are the text versions of this.
  8. First, check the "Firmware Revision". Mine was 2.26. The firmware folder I downloaded was SMT_X9_352, which means it's firmware version 3.52, so mine was definitely out of date.
  9. Go to Maintenance->Firmware Update. 
  10. Enter update mode.
  11. Browse to the downloaded firmware file. Mine was SMT_X9_352.bin. Upload.
  12. Click OK and upload firmware
  13. Uncheck the preserve configuration box. This is apparently important.
  14. Click start upgrade. 
  15. During this process, the browser will lose connection. The IMPI system will reboot, though not the server. The browser will not come back up, though, because the static IP was reset to DHCP. After a few minutes, shut down server manually.
  16. Go to Step 2. Repeat steps 3, 5, 6, and 8. You should see new firmware in the BIOS and in the Web-GUI. 
Now that IMPI is updated, you can update the BIOS. 
  1. Go to your motherboard's webpage and download the latest BIOS package. In mine, there was a text document with instructions. In that text document, there was a warning that IMPI firmware revision must be greater than 2.0 or higher before upgrading the BIOS. 
  2. I used RUFUS to create a DOS bootable USB device and copied over all of the files that came with the zip download.
  3. Boot the server with this USB drive. It should boot to a DOS prompt. Type "DIR" to make sure all of the bios files you copied over are there.
  4. Type "AMI.bat BIOSNAME.XXX" to start the BIOS Update. 
  5. When it is complete (you will get C:\> DOS prompt again), shutdown server, unplug AC, clear the CMOS (pull battery, short jumper, put battery back), plug in AC, power on.
  6. Go to BIOS, load default settings, save and reset.
Done.

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