International Business Machines Corporation

Lenovo (singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Adam Lee Soderlund

Wen Wei Tang

Eric Richard Kern

Sumeet Kochar

William Bradley Schwartz

Yun Yu Wang

Richard Alan Dayan

Mehul M Shah

Scott Neil Dunham

Joseph Edward Bolan

He Huang

Song Qing Wu

James R Goffena

Howard J Locker

Daryl Carvis Cromer

Michael Robert Turner

Simon C Chu

Ralph M Begun

William Edward Atherton

Brandon John Ellison

Jason Robert Almeida

Edward Zorek

A server motherboard diagnosis method, system, and related circuit system. A management module of the server motherboard and peripheral devices managed by the management module are capable of being powered by a server power source and a USB port. In response to the management module and the peripheral devices being powered by the USB port, a power supply line of the server power source is isolated, as by: identifying the peripheral devices, in response to the management module and the peripheral devices being powered by the USB port; for each of the identified peripheral devices, initializing the peripheral device, and then shutting down the power supply of the peripheral device; establishing a communication between the management module and a diagnosis host through the USB port; and executing a command in response to the command being received from the diagnosis host.

Diagnosis for a server motherboard

Restoring from a legacy OS environment to a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) pre-boot environment, including: storing, under the UEFI pre-boot environment, context in the UEFI pre-boot environment that needs to be preserved, where the context in the UEFI pre-boot environment that needs to be preserved includes CPU execution context; restoring a first portion of the CPU execution context in response to the UEFI pre-boot environment failing to load the legacy OS; making a CPU associated with the UEFI pre-boot environment enter into System Management Mode, and restoring a second portion of the CPU execution context under the System Management Mode; and exiting from CPU System Management Mode, thereby returning to the UEFI pre-boot environment.

Restoring from a legacy OS environment to a UEFI pre-boot environment

Remotely administering a server, the server including non-volatile memory upon which is disposed one or more digital images representing the server, the server also including one or more components each of which includes non-volatile memory in which is disposed one or more digital images representing the component, where the server is connected for data communications to a management module, and remotely administering the server includes: retrieving, by the management module from the server, the digital images representing the server and the digital images representing the installed components; generating, by the management module with the digital images representing the server and the digital images representing the installed components, a graphical representation of the server with the installed components; and presenting, by the management module to a user through a GUI, the graphical representation of the server with the installed components.

Remotely administering a server

A method identifies a plurality of PCI devices in a computer system by an associated PCI device handle, wherein each of the PCI devices is also associated with a default EFI device driver. The method further identifies a target PCI device to be disabled from within the plurality of PCI devices, provides a dummy driver that enables fewer functions for the target PCI device than would the default EFI device driver, and binds the dummy driver to the target PCI device instead of binding the default EFI device driver associated with the target PCI device. The dummy driver may be used to effectively disable the target PCI device so that the POST does not hang up or completes faster without loading the default EFI device driver.

Control over loading of device drivers for an individual instance of a PCI device

In a multi-node SMP system, at least one processor per node is enabled to execute the SMM task for the hardware resources that are local to that node. Additionally, each node is allocated its own local SMM code copy in its own SMM memory segment, to allow for improved access and a further reduction in internode traffic. In a preferred embodiment, only a signle processor per node is enabled to execute the SMM tasks, and specific SMM memory locations within the SMM memory segments are allocated and used to report status and results from each node. A root node SMM processor monitors the SMM status entries of the other nodes for completion. To further reduce run-time internode traffic, a per-node resource map is created to identify memory and I/O resources that are specific to a particular node. This per-node resource map is then stored locally within the SMM space on each node, respectively.

System management architecture for multi-node computer system

A method and system for method of removing a node from a multi-node computer. The node receives a system management interrupt (SMI), resulting in a quiescenting of only that node. The SMI receiving node then polls other nodes in the multi-node computer to determine if the SMI affects an operation of any of the other nodes, and quiescents any other node affected by the SMI. Each quiescent node then transfers all of the contents of its system memory to a backup memory in an unaffected remote node in the multi-node computer. The remote node than assumes the function of the removed node that had received the SMI. The method and system thus allows node removal in the event of a hot-swap request or a predicted failure of a node.

Node removal using remote back-up system memory

A method and system for booting up multiple PCI peripheral devices, such that the number of bootable PCI peripheral devices is not limited by the amount of computer system memory that is dedicated to storing executable boot code for the peripheral devices. The executable boot code is stored on a Read Only Memory (ROM) on each peripheral device. When a new PCI peripheral device begins to boot up, a check for available memory space in a ROM scan memory address space is performed. If there is not enough available room in the ROM scan memory address space for the new device's executable boot code, then a ROM scan detection logic pages an image of another peripheral device's executable boot code out of the ROM scan memory address space before storing the new device's executable boot code into the ROM scan memory address space.

ROM scan memory expander

A method, system, and program product supporting dynamic configuring of a multi-node computer. The system includes a scalability management module directly coupled to each node in the multi-node computer. The scalability management module sets and maintains configuration parameters for the multi-node computer, wherein if one of the nodes is removed from the multi-node computer, a hot-spare node can be dynamically configured to replace the removed node without having to reconfiguring or physically reconnect the remaining nodes

Scalability management module for dynamic node configuration

Growing community of inventors

Bahama, NC, United States of America

Adam Lee Soderlund