Cannot provision AMT to AdminControl mode

[Bryce_S_Intel]

Posting on behalf of one of my customers.

We have a PCIE card with 4 indemendent Broadwell-U processor complexes. Since we don't have a physical serial console connected to the Broadwell-U processors, so we relay on AMT to provide the serial console using the AMT SOL feature.

AMT is provisioned directly on each Broadwell-U via a utility that uses the AMT SDK. It follows the procedures indicated in the AMT SDK for EHBC, configuring each Broadwell-U to AdminControl Mode. AMT SOL and VNC are enabled as well.

We used a Linux utility "amtterm" to connect to the Boadwell-U AMT SOL console. Once connected to the console, we can reboot the cards and access the BIOS screens.

We have noticed that after several hundred power cycles of the system, the "amtterm" utility no longer stays connected to the broadwell-U AMT SOL console after a reboot. By this I mean, that if I am connected to the Broadwell-U AMT SOL console, at the Linux OS prompt on a Broadwell-U, I enter reboot, and the SOL console disconnects. Before, the power cycles, it would stay connected after a reboot.

Trying to debug the scenario described above, my first thought was to unprovision AMT and reprovison it. The same utility used to provision AMT allowes me to unprovision AMT successfully, but when attempting to re-provison AMT, it fails in the call to IPS_Host BasedSetupService.AdminSetup, with a return code of 6 (FLASH_WRITE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED).

We need to understand why this occurs and what we can do to avoid this issue.

Regards,
Bryce S.