White Papers
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i. Compare IPMItool fru print contents with license file contents
ii. Correlate with sales database to verify the license sold on that server
2. Extract the license file within Internal Area from FRU BIN
3. Update the server specific info within the license file with IPMItool fru print results
4. Sign the license file with the OEM private key and append it to the license file
5. Create a new INI file by using IPMItool fru print results and the new license file created above
6. Generate a new BIN file by using the FRU tool
7. Send the new FRU BIN to the technician or customer on site
Technician or customer to:
1. Write new FRU BIN onto the server by using IPMItool fru write
2. Verify that the application is now activated
BAD OEM FRU
The steps for handling this scenario will be very similar to the re-activation scenario. If the OEM FRU is lost or corrupted altogether, the
OEM application should be able to distinguish various failure scenarios depending on the contents of the OEM FRU:
OEM FRU is blank
OEM FRU contains mismatched server serial numbers
License file is not signed or has a bad signature
OEM FRU is completely corrupt
If any of these failures occur, the technician would need to go through additional steps to verify that the server is actually licensed within
the sales database. This is because the contents of the OEM FRU cannot be trusted and other information such as platform model or
service tag might have to be used to correlate the license to the server.
If the content is blank, it is also important to verify that the system actually has the ID Module enabling the OEM FRU capability without
which the content will not be persistent and be restored to default. This can be done by checking the system inventory for “Identity
Module”. For example, using the Racadm CLI:
> racadm -r %IP% -u root -p password swinventory | grep "Identity Module"
ElementName = Identity Module
MIGRATION
If the license needs to be migrated to another server altogether, the re-activation steps above can still be used. However, the IPMItool
fru print data would have to come from the new server, whereas the OEM FRU BIN file would come from the original server.
In order to make the verification more robust, the technician or end customer could be asked to send the IPMItool fru print contents of
the original server as well. This will allow the OEM to verify that the license file within the OEM FRU BIN actually matches the server it
was running on before approving the migration.