Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9 User's Guide

Data Processing Unit (DPU)

A Data Processing Unit (DPU) is a system on a chip that consists of ARM cores, a NIC ASIC, and acceleration engines. A DPU is programmable and potentially capable of running an operating system. DPU support is added to iDRAC from release 6.00.30.00 onwards. DPUs combine network connectivity with CPU cores independent from the Hypervisor or OS, allowing acceleration and offload services. DPUs distinguish themselves from traditional offload engines by their flexibility, programmability, and ability to host a wide variety of services.

Use of DPU offers the following advantages:

• Isolates infrastructure services from the host operating system and applications
• Enables an environment to deliver new services independent of the host application environment
• Enables hardware acceleration to perform data-intensive operations at wire-speed
• Free up server/x86 CPU cores for enabling customer applications single socket and small form factor edge platforms

Once the DPU operating system is booted, additional PCIe Functions can be initialized. So, the BIOS PCIe enumeration (and host OS/Hypervisor boot process) shall happen only after DPU operating system has booted or ready.

iDRAC allows you to configure the DPU OS Ready Mode (Boot Synchronization) settings against each DPU capable slot. Possible values are:

• Enabled: DPU does participate in holding the BIOS PCIe enumeration and host OS/Hypervisor boot process.
• Disabled: DPU does not participate in holding the BIOS PCIe enumeration and host OS/Hypervisor boot process.

Points to consider about DPU:

• Only few slots are DPU capable. iDRAC allows you to configure DPU Boot Synchronization against those slots alone.
• DPU Boot Synchronization settings are Slot-based (Not Identity based). i.e, If the DPU device is moved to a different slot, the device behaves as per the newly inserted Slot configuration.
• DPU Boot Synchronization settings are configurable even without presence of a DPU device.
• After discovery, if the slot does not have a DPU device installed, then DPU Boot Synchronization configurations are NOT effective.
• Individual DPU OS Ready and Overall DPU OS Ready is reported in the LCL.

Following are the features of DPU:

• You are allowed to configure DPU Boot Synchronization for each DPU capable slot.
• You are allowed to configure DPU OS Ready timeout value in minutes (from 0 to 30).
• Based on the user configuration, BIOS PCIe enumeration and host OS/Hypervisor boot process happens only after each Boot synchronization enabled DPU has reported that DPU OS is ready.
• Additional PCIe functions exposed by DPU OS are enumerated by BIOS and reported in iDRAC Hardware Inventory.
• BIOS displays various DPU related messages during the POST:
  • Discovering Data Processing Unit(s) ... — While discovering the DPU devices
  • Discovering Data Processing Unit(s) ... Done — When DPU discovery is completed
  • Initializing Data Processing Unit (Do NOT reboot the system) — At 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100% completion of boot-synchronization
  • Initializing Data Processing Unit... Done — When 100% completion of boot-synchronization and boot-synchronization is successful
• Individual and overall DPU OS Ready message shall be reported in LCL.
  NOTE:DPU OS Ready flag persists across the Host reboots, and DPU OS Ready message is logged for each Host reboot.
• If any LC-SSM task is present, then BIOS skips the waiting on DPU boot synchronization.

Inventory and Monitoring of DPUs

iDRAC system inventory provides the make and model of the DPU while monitoring the health of the DPU cores, peripherals, and the installed operating system. GET is used to retrieve inventory information. This action ensures no unauthorized devices are installed maliciously. Using the GET operation, you can periodically check the DPU health. If the system is healthy, it returns a payload response and status update to provide health updates.

To detect malicious or accidental DPU operating system installations use GET operation. Using GET operation you can retrieve operating system name, vendor name, version, and status of the DPU OS.

You can view the installed DPU from GUI - System > Inventory > Firmware Inventory

Redfish

Using Redfish, you can set a one-time boot configuration which is used to boot the DPU with the configured value once on reboot. On the next reboot, the DPU boot is based on the Boot Order configured. Redfish also allows you ARM-UEFI and BMC firmware updates. For more information, please refer to developer.dell.com.

Serial Console

To access serial control using RACADM, login to iDRAC SSH - Racadm> console dpu

Co-ordinated Shutdown

The ESXi OS shutdown process internally shutdown the DPU ESXio to protect ESXio File corruption.