Remote management on the Asus Pro WS X570-ACE, under Linux?

Thanks for the reply. However like you mentioned, the underwhelming features of the mentioned AsRock motherboards are a blocker for me and also those mbs are not available in my country. That ASUS motherboard would be perfect for my needs if only it allows me to remotely turn on/off the pc in a reliable manner (not by Wake On LAN which was never reliable for me) and allows remote reinstall of the main OS.

Here is the site that has all of the Asus Control Center info: https://asuscontrolcenter.asus.com/#/

They actually put out an update for it. Will try and test out the new version and let you know if it has improved at all.

Ok, tried it out again, still the same more or less. Unlike something like IPMI, that you can just access via IP address, the Control Center scheme requires a management server (a VM on Virtualbox) running on the same network as the computer you are trying to remote power on/off. So if the actual power going out at the location of the network is a concern, the control server will be off as well, and unless it is installed on a setup with IPMI or the like, there will be no way to remote access the control server.

If the actual power is not an issue and you can run a separate box to house the Control Server VM, then it may be your solution. Caveats: you can only control Windows or Linux machines and I still have no idea about what the licensing situation actually is. You would think you get the low feature license with the purchase of the board, but Iā€™m not so sure, so you may have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the set up as well.

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Thanks for looking it up. So from your description I understood that:

  1. The remote installation of OS is not possible, since I need to have already working Windows or Linux to be able to use that management interface.
  2. I must setup a server VM on other host in the same network to be able to use that management interface at all. This is not a problem cause I already have one box running all the time.

Is my understanding ok?

If yes, then to sum up - this MB is a bummer, nothing more. The management interface which cannot be accessed fully remotely and cannot even allow to access screen console and allow to control the MB without installed OS is just a nonsense. I am really disappointed about that:(

You are correct on both points.

Also for anyone else looking at this in the future, the Express License DOES come free with the board, however, can only be used on a Windows 10 system. So you cannot deploy on a Linux system without paying for the next level license.

Bottom line is that this board does have ECC support and 3 full pcie 4.0 x8 ability but no actual remote management acces like IPMI. Sounds more like some custom VNC setup and really should not be advertised as ā€œremote management.ā€

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I just wanted to drop by and confirm that the IPMI/BMC on this motherboard is not an actual feature.

The board does have the best IOMMU groups Iā€™ve ever seen on any AM4 board though. All in all, Iā€™d rate it 8/10.

I got one of these systems and their so called ACC is not even close to a BMC.

  1. You have to run their VM on a separate system.
  2. You then have to link their system to the target system which was a pain in the backside.
  3. Need license for the mid/advanced stuff that comes with a proper BMC like the ASPEED 2500.

Now using the system as a paper weight until I need a utility system.

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That sucks but is kind of expected (in my opinion) from ASUS.

I have this board and can address some of the questions regarding the IPMI functionality. I have used this board to successfully remotely manage my PC when running as a hypervisor. I have yet to see if I can boot from the 8117 video output but I do know if I pass through my GPUs the 8117 does provide basic video input to manage the server. The trick to getting the BMC to properly work remotely is to set the 8117 settings in the BIOS to Remote Multi-Display or Remote Single-DIsplay and setting the KVM setting in ASUS ACC from disabled to enabled and starting the machine via the ACC. The machine can then be remotely managed as a headless system which is a huge plus for me given that I am passing both of my GPUs though the VMs.

@droric - Apologies; Iā€™m having a tough time parsing what you (and others granted) are saying. Bear with me ā€“

  • It requires a VM (HyperV possible? Must be a certain type?) to use. Is this right? There is no facility to manage this machine via just a web browser?
  • One must go into the BIOS and set ā€œRemote Multi-Displayā€ or ā€œRemote Single-Displayā€ (Whatā€™s this?) before use? Can you explain a little more about this?
  • Asus ACC - is that Asus Control Center, or Asus Control Center Express? One is free (Express) with this board, one is a paid upgrade; which are you referring to?

I seek (using Express - no additional $ outlay) to have a Windows Server 2019 setup - and I want to manage this via Windows Remote Desktop, of course, but in cases where WRD fails, I want to use IMPI to come into the system. Will this allow that, while I have the OS booted, while using, say, an AMD RX550 or nVidia 1050Ti graphics card? What pitfalls or gotchas do you see here?

Will this allow me to power on the machine from full poweroff, and then go into the BIOS, set boot order, and install a (Windows-based) OS, using just IPMI until I am fully joined to a domain and able to remote desktop into the machine without IPMI?

Can you address an earlier comment in the thread, that this software (IMPI or ACC Express? Canā€™t tellā€¦) is Windows 10 only?

Let me try my best to answer your questions.

You need to run the ACCE software to remotely manage the PC from what I can tell. It does setup web ports and runs a web server but I havenā€™t checked if you can access it directly and access a PCs video output. That being said I canā€™t stand browser solutions and prefer the ASUS approach over web based java IPMI interfaces. I have a windows VM on my server running for this purpose specifically. Hyper-V would be fine.

The default for this board is to boot from the slotted GPUs and behave like a normal PC. There is an option under advanced for the RTL8117 IPMI/NIC to enable the KVM functionality. With it set to remote single-display you can disable the GPUs in the host OS and boot directly from the IPMI video freeing up a video card for other uses if you run the system as a hypervisor. Without the RTL8117 set to remote single-display then when WIndows boots you have to use RDP to access the machine since the display from the onboard video is disabledā€¦ unless you disable the GPUs and remove the monitors then you can go headless via IPMI. I pass my GPUs through from a hypervisor so this works great for me since I have access to another video device and do not need a cheap video card slotted in.

ACCE is what I should be referring to. I am still a bit confused what the difference between ACC and ACCE is since much of the documentation is in Chinese.

You can power the machines on, off, force off, reboot etc from the ACCE software. It also has the ā€˜Remote Desktopā€™ component which lets you connect to the IPMI video device. I can setup the system remotely from start to finish by mounting an ISO from ACCE, accessing the BIOS and booting to the mounted image and then installing an OS and going from there all without having physical access. It is a little rough around the edges but it is also the only X570 board with good IOMMU groups, ARI, SR-IOV, ACS. It works great for virtualization from my experience so far.

The ACCE software I think has a linux version but I have only used it with Windows server so far.

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You got the KVM working? I canā€™t seem to. Can you post a screenshot of what itā€™s supposed to look like?

The first 2 screenshots were taken remotely from ACCE and the 3rd shows the setting that needs to be enabled in ACCE to enable the KVM support. So the BIOS needs to be configured with the mode first and then the KVM needs to be enabled remotely from the ACCE application. I had to disable my GPUs in Windows to confirm that it will indeed boot and run with only the IPMI controller since this machine is being setup as a Hypervisor and I am passing my GPUs through to VMs using PCI pass-through.

Edit: I canā€™t submit links so go to imgur and add /a/jJpkzAF to the URL.

Thanks! Going to try this when I get home. Would be awesome to get it working and get rid of the excess cables in my rack for DP and USB.

@droric : Still not clear on the video card disabling bit.

Iā€™m familiar with assigning video cards or other hardware to VMs, in say, ESXi 6.5/6.7. Iā€™m assuming HyperV has something similar. So the thought process is to use the Asus IPMI as the default ā€œvideoā€ for the Asus board, so that you can see it when you IPMI into it with ACCE, and you are then free to assign your 1050Ti or whateverā€™s attached to the Asus motherboard to a VM, say a Plex server, for transcoding via hardware.

Is that about right? I assume once youā€™ve done that youā€™ll have no local display capability whatsoever, and so that would be a very bad situation if you ever forgot / lost your ability to IMPI into the systemā€¦ How would one get it back if that happened?

Your understanding is correct. Yes I was disabling the other video devices so they could be passed through to the VMs. The local display is provided by the IPMI video card. If that device was unavailable you would have to reset the BIOS and then disable the KVM and the OS should hopefully use one of the video cards despite it being disabled.

I hope I didnā€™t space out but does this mean that you can boot the Pro WS X570-Ace after a CMOS reset with a dedicated GPU, configure the IPMI-like feature and then remove the GPU and have all slots available for other PCIe add-in cards?

@droric

Hey, hope you are still monitoring this thread. I got the Asus WS Pro x570-ACE and a Ryzen 3900x and am trying to set it up as an esxi server and passing the GPU to the VM, like you.

I have run into a few difficulties Iā€™d like to run by you. Iā€™m starting out with just a basic Windows 10 install (bare metal) just to figure out how to use the Asus Control Center (ACCE). I have installed the client on the machine and am running ACCE. I am running the latest BIOS 1302.

The first issue is this: When I try to enable KVM, I get a failure saying ā€œThe device needs to be restarted for the new BIOS settings to take effectā€. Iā€™ve already got Remote Single-Display enabled. Have you ever seen this warning? The remote desktop still works, but I think itā€™s probably running off the graphics card.

The second issue is this: When I have Remote Single Display enabled, every time the computer is rebooted it fails to complete booting 3-5 times before it successfully completes. Itā€™s fine when the Remote display is disabled. Have you experienced this?

The final issue is I canā€™t seem to update the ACCE firmware. The download from the website doesnā€™t contain the .img file that the ACCE remote update is expecting. When I attempt to update it remotely from my laptop, it reads the BIOS info from my laptop and errors. When I attempt to update it locally, it errors out saying ā€œno server backupā€. I canā€™t seem to find any information online about what this firmware is and how important it is to the whole thing. Any thoughts?

Sorry to inundate you with all these questions, but it seems like you are the person whose setup is more similar to what I wish to have.

Thanks!

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Yeah, I get failed and the reboot error when I try t enable it as well.

I have seen the same behavior with it asking to restart the PC before the KVM will be enabled. I donā€™t have a real explanation but I can guess that itā€™s not well written software and the software wants to enable the KVM in the BIOS which was already doneā€¦

The issue with the multiple reboots is due to ram instability. I had the same issue on my system and I ran some memory tests and the PC was failing the memory test at about 3-4 hours in. Once I made sure the memory was stable and manually set timings I had no more issues with the multiple reboots. I am using heavily overclocked RAM but I do recall it did it at stock settings as well until I got my memory dialed in. My memory is not on the ASUS QVL list for memory so its technically unsupported/tested and that may be the cause of the instability.

I updated the ACCE firmware by downloading the software from ASUSā€™s website and updating via the executable. I seem to remember that I had to have my KVM stuff working and the realtek card has to have an IP address and be functioning for the update to start/apply.

Hope this helps!