`<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>On Dec 12, 2013, at 2:24, "Paul B. Henson" <<a href="mailto:henson@acm.org">henson@acm.org</a>> wrote:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"><span>From: Keith Wesolowski [<a href="mailto:keith.wesolowski@joyent.com">mailto:keith.wesolowski@joyent.com</a>]</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 9:01 AM</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>My perspective on this is that being able to upgrade firmware over the</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>LAN interface is an essential manageability feature.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>I don't know if I want to call them "higher end", or "brand name", but for</span><br><span>the most part all of my servers from Sun or IBM have had this functionality,</span><br><span>other than occasionally needing to boot an ISO image to update RAID</span><br><span>controller firmware.</span><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The SOL included in iDRAC7 (with or without the Enterprise license) lets you configure BIOS settings with an XML file on an NFS share:</div><div><a href="http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2013/01/04/idrac7-now-support-configuring-server-idrac-bios-perc-and-nic-using-xml-file-and-racadm.aspx">http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2013/01/04/idrac7-now-support-configuring-server-idrac-bios-perc-and-nic-using-xml-file-and-racadm.aspx</a></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>What's even more obnoxious is that it's usually impossible to preserve</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>settings across a firmware upgrade, and that there's generally no way to</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>export or import settings or set them noninteractively.</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>Yah, BIOS sucks :(.</span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>Very much appreciate everyone out there fighting the good fight on this</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>stuff. When you win, we all win!</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>I think you guys have more clout with at least supermicro than most if not</span><br><span>everybody else on this list ;), maybe you could give your sales rep a good</span><br><span>smack about the ridiculousness of trying to nickel and dime customers for</span><br><span>this IPMI feature :).</span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>`