Dual Xeon-D

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itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,234
794
113
Denver, Colorado
Received my boards today. Had about 1 hour to play, type this up and then I had to get back to work.
Came well packaged, in a Corsair Carbide 175 chassis box, each board in a silver anti-static bag, tape wrapped in bubble wrap. More bubble wrap around both and then well packed with bubble wrap in the box. Nicely done @MONTREAL-COMPUTERS.

@BlueFox is correct SIL/CP2104 uart bridge.

Serial BIOS settings 115200, 8, n, 1
Board takes a while to heat up, the post display will display 3 for a while, eventually fans spin up and go.
BIOS has a password. I tried: password, Password, admin, ADMIN, no joy.
I performed a clear cmos which reset the date to 4/8/2018 (screen shot shows a different date as it was pre cmos clear)
BIOS still has a password. You can get into the BIOS with reduced functionality - just can't change anything.
Both of my boards are set to UEFI boot from the network.
I did not mess around with the IPMI network interface as I ran out of time.
SFF-8643 is labeled PE_SSD_0_3_2 and IIRC 0_3_1 - I think the PE is the clue that this is indeed NVME.
Front panel connector seems to be wired standard asrock, power LED lights up, didn't test HDD LED, Reset and Power switch seem to have no effect which is I guess expected.
Rear Reset buttons work as expected.
Board dimensions are 12"x13" so basically EATX/SSI-EEB etc. etc. etc. Standoffs "look standard" but I'm not close to trying to mount this in a chassis so IDK. I counted qty 4 4-pin Fan connectors along the front of the board (towards drive bays), I did not look carefully so could be 5.

Top of the motherboard being where ATX power plugs in, that is also the half of the board for Node 1.
I only started off with Node 1 as I need to dig out a psu with dual 8pin or a splitter from the box of cables.
Used 32GB PC4-2400T sticks. Seems to be fine.
10Gbe reports as Intel X550 series specifically X552
I tried booting with a MEMTEST86 bootable USB - didn't appear in the boot list which was all UEFI Network adapter and can't be changed without password.
I know @MONTREAL-COMPUTERS said these were returned because they would not fit in a SM chassis, but other than the top left hole it looks like this should fit in the typical SM 826/836/846 though a nylon standoff may be needed for the top left hole.

Just thinking out loud an 826 with the NVME/A backplane, a couple of m.2 SFF863 adapters might be interesting to get all 4 NVME's in trays, reverse SATA to SFF-8643 for 4 drives per node, maybe a rear SSD trays or velcro for a boot disk for each node.

Since I tried the clear cmos (about a 5 minute wait and the date did change I think that was successful) I am now wondering if the BIOS password is written somewhere else on this board... UEFI area maybe?

@MONTREAL-COMPUTERS any chance you know someone you can call to get the BIOS password? It would save us some time trying to get past that?

some images attached:

IMG_3468.jpg IMG_3469.jpg IMG_3470.jpg Screen Shot 2020-06-02 at 12.47.18 PM.pngScreen Shot 2020-06-02 at 12.59.30 PM.pngScreen Shot 2020-06-02 at 1.00.39 PM.pngScreen Shot 2020-06-02 at 1.00.21 PM.png
 

bob_dvb

Active Member
Sep 7, 2018
214
116
43
Not quite London
www.orbit.me.uk
Received my boards today. Had about 1 hour to play, type this up and then I had to get back to work.
Came well packaged, in a Corsair Carbide 175 chassis box, each board in a silver anti-static bag, tape wrapped in bubble wrap. More bubble wrap around both and then well packed with bubble wrap in the box. Nicely done @MONTREAL-COMPUTERS.

@BlueFox is correct SIL/CP2104 uart bridge.

Serial BIOS settings 115200, 8, n, 1
Board takes a while to heat up, the post display will display 3 for a while, eventually fans spin up and go.
BIOS has a password. I tried: password, Password, admin, ADMIN, no joy.
I performed a clear cmos which reset the date to 4/8/2018 (screen shot shows a different date as it was pre cmos clear)
BIOS still has a password. You can get into the BIOS with reduced functionality - just can't change anything.
Both of my boards are set to UEFI boot from the network.
I did not mess around with the IPMI network interface as I ran out of time.
SFF-8643 is labeled PE_SSD_0_3_2 and IIRC 0_3_1 - I think the PE is the clue that this is indeed NVME.
Front panel connector seems to be wired standard asrock, power LED lights up, didn't test HDD LED, Reset and Power switch seem to have no effect which is I guess expected.
Rear Reset buttons work as expected.
Board dimensions are 12"x13" so basically EATX/SSI-EEB etc. etc. etc. Standoffs "look standard" but I'm not close to trying to mount this in a chassis so IDK. I counted qty 4 4-pin Fan connectors along the front of the board (towards drive bays), I did not look carefully so could be 5.

Top of the motherboard being where ATX power plugs in, that is also the half of the board for Node 1.
I only started off with Node 1 as I need to dig out a psu with dual 8pin or a splitter from the box of cables.
Used 32GB PC4-2400T sticks. Seems to be fine.
10Gbe reports as Intel X550 series specifically X552
I tried booting with a MEMTEST86 bootable USB - didn't appear in the boot list which was all UEFI Network adapter and can't be changed without password.
I know @MONTREAL-COMPUTERS said these were returned because they would not fit in a SM chassis, but other than the top left hole it looks like this should fit in the typical SM 826/836/846 though a nylon standoff may be needed for the top left hole.

Just thinking out loud an 826 with the NVME/A backplane, a couple of m.2 SFF863 adapters might be interesting to get all 4 NVME's in trays, reverse SATA to SFF-8643 for 4 drives per node, maybe a rear SSD trays or velcro for a boot disk for each node.

Since I tried the clear cmos (about a 5 minute wait and the date did change I think that was successful) I am now wondering if the BIOS password is written somewhere else on this board... UEFI area maybe?

@MONTREAL-COMPUTERS any chance you know someone you can call to get the BIOS password? It would save us some time trying to get past that?

some images attached:

View attachment 14359 View attachment 14358 View attachment 14357 View attachment 14363View attachment 14360View attachment 14362View attachment 14361
Ah,

These are not OVH servers, I see what they are now... They are Akamai server nodes. There are two mentions of Akamai in your screen shots.

I know the Akamai guys, but I suspect they would never confirm or deny much publicly.

Bob
 
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itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,234
794
113
Denver, Colorado
Ah,

These are not OVH servers, I see what they are now... They are Akamai CDN cache servers. There are two mentions of Akamai in your screen shots.

I know the Akamai guys, but I suspect they would never confirm or deny much publicly.

Bob
I had wondered about that too but the OVH story also fit...
I messaged the seller via ebay too asking if they might know it.
I also have a friend that did a multi-year project at AK so I'll see if they can reach out to someone.
I am not optimistic of either of these avenues but it doesn't hurt to ask.
 
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BlueFox

Legendary Member Spam Hunter Extraordinaire
Oct 26, 2015
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@BlueFox is correct SIL/CP2104 uart bridge.
Hooray, glad they added BIOS support for the serial console. Regarding the BIOS password, if enough people on here bought one of these, could pool together some funding and have a custom password-free BIOS made like it was done on the X10SLH-N6-ST031.
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,234
794
113
Denver, Colorado
Hooray, glad they added BIOS support for the serial console. Regarding the BIOS password, if enough people on here bought one of these, could pool together some funding and have a custom password-free BIOS made like it was done on the X10SLH-N6-ST031.
potentially - early days yet. The bay lists 16 sold. Not really keen on throwing a bunch of money down the rabbit hole though. at $79.00 a node with cpu I think this is an interesting deal if they can be made to work. have not yet tried slotting an m.2 or SATA drive to see what happens but a bootable usb didn't change the boot order so IDK.

I did fire up node 2 on this board a few minutes ago with a crazy series of splitters to extend the cable length and only used half the 8p's to feed power to each node. it came up and behaves the same as the other node. so I know I have 2 nodes working on this board. Memory now up to 64GB / node too so that is nice, max is 128GB IIRC.

I also plugged in a network cable to one of the RJ45's. Didn't see anything pop in DHCP. Could be these are all preconfigured tagged to some mgmt VLAN for AK in the BIOS. If that network port is IPMI. would not surprise me - make it easy for PnP on a board failure and if you make enough boards and have a standard why not?
for that I'll need to spin up WS/ethereal and see what's what on the port. when I get time.

*sigh* back to work again.
 

tp1

Member
Feb 5, 2016
32
11
8
43
I got mine today as well. Adding to what @itronin said above and adding more details:
1. They seem to be Ciara technologies boards model number 1x8-x8, anyone has any details on these? Couldn't find anything on the web.
2. Saw more references to Akamai in the bios.
3. Got Unraid booted up on one of the nodes, works well. The RJ45's are serial cables, any standard Cisco RJ45 to USB should work. Was able to see unraid console output on these.
4. Dont see any IPMI on these, however the FPGA, Virtex 7 is not visible when I look at the pci devices.
 
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itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,234
794
113
Denver, Colorado
that's what I get for assuming RJ45 and the silkscreened LAN_1_2 meant. *sight*. so two consoles per node? Convenient I guess, esp if someone had a serial term server.

@tp1 nice to hear its booted up and running something useful!!!!

Is your BIOS locked?

Did you have unraid already on a disk or did you install via usb? my bootable usb did not boot.
 

tp1

Member
Feb 5, 2016
32
11
8
43
@itronin - bios is locked and not able to figure out password. Have a UEFI USB formated with Unraid and once u get to the BIOS, goto the exit menu item and there you should be able to override and boot from the USB drive. Thats how I got it booting unraid. Interestingly the bios is a 8 pin removable bios chip that hopefully someone can figure out how to remove the password. I believe the password is embedded in the bios itself, if you look at the bios menus it says the supervisor and user passwords are not setup.

Also, there is a socketed flash chip near the FPGA. The company Ciara technologies seems to make cache (hence Akamai?) and HFT systems so the FPGA has some relevance there.
 
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andreathing

New Member
May 5, 2020
23
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3
I'm waiting for mine. I have bought it but Ebay wouldn't let me pay until the seller provides a shipping quote (which he haven't done for the past 5 days...).

I do not think the password is in the bios itself, but maybe it's stored in a memory that's non volatile or backed by some sort of capacitor. I once saw a bios that needed a jumper applied and a power cycle for full reset and not only battery removal.

@tp1 @itronin if you send me detailed photos of the bios chip and various flash memories scattered around the board i could try to retrieve the datasheet and start figure out some way to dump them.
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,234
794
113
Denver, Colorado
I'm waiting for mine. I have bought it but Ebay wouldn't let me pay until the seller provides a shipping quote (which he haven't done for the past 5 days...).

I do not think the password is in the bios itself, but maybe it's stored in a memory that's non volatile or backed by some sort of capacitor. I once saw a bios that needed a jumper applied and a power cycle for full reset and not only battery removal.

@tp1 @itronin if you send me detailed photos of the bios chip and various flash memories scattered around the board i could try to retrieve the datasheet and start figure out some way to dump them.
Let me see what I can do though it may be later today.
 
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Navy_BOFH

Active Member
Aug 2, 2013
179
74
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Well now I am slightly miffed the seller did not accept my offer and I missed out on these. I hope for some more to show up because I would love to get it going as a lab setup.
 

andreathing

New Member
May 5, 2020
23
11
3
I finally solved all the shipping related issues and should have it in 7 - 10 days. Looking forward to playing with it
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,234
794
113
Denver, Colorado
@tp1 @itronin if you send me detailed photos of the bios chip and various flash memories scattered around the board i could try to retrieve the datasheet and start figure out some way to dump them.
Got a place to push it?

With horrible quality loss at high zoom I can get the file down to about 1.1MB - which is still too large to upload here.

JPEG conversion from RAW is 28.1MB
 
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tp1

Member
Feb 5, 2016
32
11
8
43
the Bios chip is a standard socketed winbond 25q128fviq. Hope that helps. I should be able to get the BIOS image, AMI has a tool for that. @andreathing would you know how to figure out the password from a bios dump or remove it?
 

zjr8

New Member
Jun 3, 2020
23
12
3
I got mine today had a bit of time to play... didnt want to dig out the soic clips etc but here is a dump made using the AMI uefi util from node A. Link here if it will let me post it as a new user
 
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bob_dvb

Active Member
Sep 7, 2018
214
116
43
Not quite London
www.orbit.me.uk
It might be worth using chipsec (sudo pip install chipsec)

# python chipsec_main.py -m common.bios_wp

This might tell you the common vulnerabilities of the bios and chipset.

Alternatively there are ways of invalidating the CMOS checksum which can reset a password, I don't know how dangerous that is on an unknown motherboard? How To Remove, Clear, Reveal, Unlock or Reset BIOS Security Password • Raymond.CC

Edit: Someone who managed to extract the password on their AMI Aptio Toughbook: