Joshua's questions

This may seem like stupid questions to some but I am very fearful of updating my BIOS after bricking a motherboard once. Please bear with me.

I purchased a Quanta D51B-2U that came with an older BIOS that does not support V4 CPUs. I have managed to find a V3 CPU and a couple of BIOS update packages with the required files to upgrade it to a supported BIOS.

I am currently on S2B_3A17. I tried using the CPU upgrade package on the official Quanta website but it refuses to update the BIOS even though it throws no errors and the BMC updates successfully to 3.45.01.

The packages I found are incremental in updates. Below are the instructions included with one of the packages.

1. It is very important to follow the flash option provided in the batch file to update BIOS
   under UEFI SHELL/WINDOWS/Linux environment. 
   Using incorrect flash option to flash BIOS may cause damage to your system.

   A. Burn S2B_XXXX.BIN via fixture, or
   B. Follow below steps to update BIOS:
      EFI Shell:
      (1) Copy BIOS package to a USB flash drive.
      (2) Attaching the USB flash drive on system.
      (3) Boot up the system to EFI SHELL.
      (4) Change directory to BIOS package.
      (5) Exectute BIOS_efi64.nsh for BIOS region update or execute ME_efi64.nsh for ME region update. 
      (6) Reset system while the procedure is success. 

I have several questions which I haven't been able to find the results for:

1. There are many versions of the BIOS provided in the folder. Do I need to update them sequentially or can I jump straight to the latest BIOS version?

2. There is a web BMC that I can go into via the BMC IP that has a section that allows BIOS updates. It accepts .BIN files. Can I use this to upload the .BIN file in the package? The first line of the package instructions scares me.

3. If using the web BMC is not a good idea, do I need a special EFI boot disk or can I use the built in UEFI shell?

4. The BIOS instructions says that a higher BMC version is required. Do I update the BIOS first or the BMC? Can I upgrade the BMC all the way to the latest (2020 version) while leaving BIOS on the 2015 version before starting on the BIOS update?

In case anyone is interested, the packages are available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bCkEldzh99GIQRQP_Z7vwIOyu6r1lFH2?usp=sharing

Thanks!

I'm trying to wrap my mind around why this isn't working:

1. Fileserver resides in a (virtual) network under a CloudStack VPC 10.1.1.0/24
2. Client machine is on a Physical network (also the edge router) 192.168.1.0/24
3. There are static routes setup between both subnets and pinging both machines work fine (as well as tracert)
4. Windows firewall on the client machine is set to allow "any subnet" for File and Printer Sharing
5. Can't find the file share via "\FS" - invalid location
6. Ping to "fs" works
7. Nslookup "fs" also points to the right address
8. VPC rules allow for Egress traffic from 10.1.1.0/24 and both Ingress+Egress from 192.168.1.0/24 (even tried swapping to full allow for both Ingress+Egress)
9. Attempting to connect from the physical machine gives this error: "file and print sharing resource is online but isn't responding to connection attempts"
10. Attempting to connect from a VM on the same physical network works fine
11. IIS on the FS is accessible from all machines including the physical machines
12. Same for RDP. Only file sharing is somehow blocked
13. tcpdump of the 10.1.1.0/24 interface of the CloudStack router for port 445 shows that the inbound traffic from the physical machine is hitting the router but there is no outbound response. Confirms the error " "file and print sharing resource is online but isn't responding to connection attempts".
14. tcpdump shows outbound traffic from the FS to another VM on the same physical network and subnet as the physical machines but all the other physical machines don't get any reply when accessing "\FS"
15. Seems like file sharing is being blocked by something. There's some hidden setting somewhere that is causing the file server to discard SMB packets (no outbound traffic on router tcpdump) from outside the subnet. Any ideas where to look?
16. I really wish I could use site-to-site VPN but it seems to be broken for ACS

Thanks in advance!