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We are having a big deployment of servers (DL160SE G6) and I need to find a way to configure their BIOS settings without going through the RBSU of each one - It would take too long.

I am thinking about making something on a bootable CD or alike - If possible...

I've been looking around and to my understanding it is possible to do it with SmartStart Scripting Toolkit.

I read the PDF that came with it and I see tools such as RBSURESET which resets the BIOS settings and SETBOOTORDER which enables you to set the order in which devices are booted.. But I don't see any tools to change other settings in the BIOS such as the settings in the 'Advanced BIOS Settings'

If anyone can tip me on how to go about this, where to start, best practice or link to any tutorial I would be very grateful.

EEAA
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ToastMan
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2 Answers2

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You should be able to accomplish this using the HP conrep utility provided in the SmartStart Scripting Toolkit. If you're looking at the Advanced BIOS settings, are you trying to change things like the set of low-latency options for the system? Here's a link to an HP white paper detailing the setup for specific low-latency applications. Some advanced BIOS options are covered:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01804533.pdf

The idea with conrep is that you can configure a single system the way you want manually, then capture its settings into a file that can be used for other system deployments. An example of syntax:

To configure BIOS low-latency options using the conrep utility in SSSTK: 
1.  Change the current directory to the SSSTK/utilities directory:
cd SSSTK/utilities
2.  To disable Processor Power and Utilization Monitoring, verify that the conrep.dat file contains the
following markup:
<Conrep> <PowerMonitoring>0x10</PowerMonitoring> </Conrep>
3.  To disable Memory Pre-Failure Notification, verify that the conrep.dat file contains the following markup:
<Conrep> <DisableMemoryPrefailureNotification>1</DisableMemoryPrefailureNotificat ion> </Conrep>
4.  Enter the following commands: ./conrep -l -fconrep.dat reboot
ewwhite
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  • Thank you ewwhite this is pretty much the information I hoping to find. One question, where do I run conrep from? (I'm reading about Windows PE, do I need it?) – ToastMan Apr 01 '11 at 14:24
  • Look here: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/toolkit/index.html – ewwhite Apr 01 '11 at 15:02
  • Sorry, I assumed you were Linux-based... but check the documentation for the Windows solution. – ewwhite Apr 01 '11 at 22:13
  • I will close this for now and try to make it happen, I might start another question focused on conrep. – ToastMan Apr 04 '11 at 17:59
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Easily the best way of doing this is via the iLO port - it supports SSH, RIBCL, IPMI, SMASH CLP etc. We have pre-written scripts that setup all of our iLO and BIOS as required written in RIBCL. There's lots of help on HP's site about this but basically you'll be using the iLO system rather than a boot CD.

Chopper3
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