Broadcom Corporation

Robert Ray Swindell

Hemal Vinodchandra Shah

Stephen Hurd

A portion of management traffic, carried via network traffic, and received and/or transmitted via a network controller, may be processed externally to the network controller. A pass-through driver may be utilized, in the network controller, to enable transparent routing of management traffic that may be processed externally. The externally processed management traffic may comprise WS-Management based messaging, while management traffic that may comprise ASF based messaging may be processed internally in the network controller. An application processor may be utilized to perform external processing of received and/or transmitted management traffic. A management bus may be utilized to enable routing of management traffic processed external to the network controller. The management bus may also be utilized to enable platform operations during processing of management traffic. The application processor may invoke, via the management bus and/or the pass-through driver, platform based functionality maintained via the network controller.

Method and system for a distributed platform solution for supporting CIM over web services based management

Embodiments enable secure zero-touch remote provisioning/management of a computer system. A computer system is shipped to end customers with its remote management controller enabled but not provisioned. During automatic testing, for example, provisioning authentication data is embedded into the remote management controller. The computer system vendor harvests the provisioning authentication data or derivative data therefrom from the remote management controller and stores it in a database. Upon sale of the computer system, the computer system vendor provides to the end-customer the harvested data of the computer system's remote management controller. The end-customer can then remotely authenticate a remote provisioning/management console to the remote management controller. Once successfully authenticated, the remote provisioning/management console can provision the remote management controller with one or more user accounts/roles with corresponding authentication details, authenticate as one of the provisioned user accounts, and perform computer system provisioning using remote manageability functions as desired.

Secure zero-touch provisioning of remote management controller

A platform may comprise a management controller (MC) and a BIOS that may store SMBIOS information that may comprise metadata. SMBIOS information may be stored in the SMBIOS structure table. SMBIOS information may be transferred to the MC and may be communicated from the MC to an entity external to the platform. The BIOS may be inaccessible to the external entity. The MC may communicate with the external entity when the platform is powered ON or OFF. SMBIOS information may be transferred between the BIOS and the MC via a communication link. The MC and/or the BIOS may determine whether SMBIOS information from the MC is up-to-date. SMBIOS information may be copied from the BIOS to the MC if not up-to-date. SMBIOS information may be transferred via SMBIOS messages based on structure type, instance ID and/or handle.

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Norco Hills, CA, United States of America

Robert Ray Swindell