Provisionserver DNS not robust enough

[johanvandberg]

I have a HP-DC7700 which exposed the following problem. Maybe just confirm that you see the same problem in your test labs.

1) The machine has just received its PID-PPS from flash drive. But it has never contacted the SCS yet.
2) I have my SCS server (DNS name "ProvisionServer") pointing to my box actually called "MytestServer".
3) "MyTestServer" is a multi homed server with 2 network adapters. One connected to my test network where the AMT box is, and the other is connected to my corporate network so that I can easily get data from there.
4) I sometimes have a router between these two networks but it is not required. This lucky "feature" of my network is what will expose the AMT problem as you will see.
5) So in my DNS server, it will know of both interfaces of this server - but the one may not always be reachable!
6) When this AMT box now gets connected it will search for "ProvisionServer", and the DNS will tell it of both IP addresses of "MyTestServer". And guess what, AMT keeps on hammering at the IP address which is not reachable.

This can not be robust enough in my eyes as it does know of the other IP address but simply never tries it. If it does it will get provisioned.

Let me know what you guys find, maybe this problem spans accross different versions of AMT?

Regards.
Johan.

[Ajith_I_Intel]

Hi Johan,

That is quite an interesting situation you have there. I have few questions about your setup. On the AMT client through the OS, can you ping ProvisionServer.yourdomain.com? Is it possible that your DNS server is providing the IP address that is unreachable as the first IP address? May be you need to change your DNS server to provide the valid(reachable) IP address first or may be you need to bridge the two network interfaces on your ProvisionServer. I am very curious to see if the OS on AMT client can connect to your Provisioning server. Also can you connect or ping to AMT system from your ProvisionServer?

Let us know your findings.

Thanks.

[johanvandberg]

I have performed this test for you, and the result is that the Windows XP resolver works.

The DNS reply packet looks exactly the same between AMT and Windows, but somehow AMT always chooses the last IP address in the DNS reply, which is the wrong one. Windows XP however chooses the first IP address.

Whether that is by pure luck, or by Microsoft actually calculating that the one IP address is in the local subnet mask I do not know.

Regards.
Johan.