Step 1 — Connect the BMC port

Connect the port labelled BMC to your network with a standard Ethernet cable.

The BMC requests an address over DHCP, so on a normal network it will have one within a few seconds of link-up. It does not share an address with the two 2.5GbE data ports.

🚧

Anyone who can reach this port has full control of the appliance, including power and remote media. Keep it on a management network or VLAN, and never expose it directly to the internet.

Step 2 — Find the BMC IP address

The BMC has its own MAC address, and it is printed on the label on the bottom of the unit. The label lists all three of the appliance's MAC addresses in a compressed form — a full address followed by the last byte of the other two:

MAC Addresses: 00:00:01:0A:2B:46/47/48

That means 00:00:01:0A:2B:46, 00:00:01:0A:2B:47 and 00:00:01:0A:2B:48.

📘

The first address in that list is the BMC port on the units we have checked, so start with it — 00:00:01:0A:2B:46 in the example above. The other two belong to the 2.5GbE data ports. This ordering is not guaranteed by the manufacturer, so if the first address does not lead to the portal, repeat the lookup with the second and third and use the check in Option 3 to confirm which one answered.

Option 1 — Ask your DHCP server (recommended)

Look up the active lease for the first MAC address on the label. This puts no traffic on the network at all and is the fastest route on any managed network — Windows Server DHCP under Address Leases, or the client list of your firewall or wireless controller, searching by MAC address.

Option 2 — Listen for that one MAC address

If you cannot query the DHCP server, watch for the BMC directly. This command only listens — it sends nothing and touches no other device on the network, so it is safe on a large production network.

Run it on a computer on the same subnet, replacing the MAC with the first one from your label and the interface with your own:

# macOS
sudo tcpdump -i en0 -n ether host 00:00:01:0A:2B:46

# Ubuntu / Debian   (install with: sudo apt install tcpdump)
sudo tcpdump -i eth0 -n ether host 00:00:01:0A:2B:46

# RHEL / CentOS / Rocky   (install with: sudo dnf install tcpdump)
sudo tcpdump -i ens192 -n ether host 00:00:01:0A:2B:46

Use ip link (Linux) or ifconfig (macOS) if you are unsure of your interface name.

With the capture running, unplug the BMC network cable and plug it back in. The BMC immediately requests an address, and its IP appears in the output — look for the DHCP exchange or the ARP announcement carrying that MAC. Press Ctrl-C to stop.

Option 3 — Check the neighbour table you already have

If your computer has already communicated with the BMC, the address is cached locally. No packets are sent.

# Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, Rocky) — the table stores the full MAC
ip neigh | grep -i 00:00:01:0A:2B:46

# Linux — same lookup, printing only the IP address
ip neigh | awk -v m=00:00:01:0a:2b:46 'tolower($5)==m {print $1}'

# Windows (PowerShell) — Windows uses dashes
arp -a | Select-String "00-00-01-0a-2b-46"

# macOS — strips leading zeros when printing, so normalise both sides first
MAC=00:00:01:0A:2B:46
NORM=$(awk -F: '{s="";for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){b=tolower($i);sub(/^0+/,"",b);if(b=="")b="0";s=s (i>1?":":"") b}print s}' <<<"$MAC")
arp -an | awk -v m="$NORM" '
function n(x,   a,i,b,s){s="";i=split(tolower(x),a,":");for(k=1;k<=i;k++){b=a[k];sub(/^0+/,"",b);if(b=="")b="0";s=s (k>1?":":"") b}return s}
n($4)==m {gsub(/[()]/,"",$2); print $2}'

📘

The macOS normalisation is not optional. macOS stores the label MAC 00:00:01:0A:2B:46 as 0:0:1:a:2b:46, so searching for the printed form finds nothing at all.

Option 4 — Subnet sweep (small networks only)

🚧

Only on a small or lab network, and with the agreement of whoever runs it. This pings every address on the subnet, which is noisy, can raise intrusion-detection alerts, and is not appropriate on a production network with hundreds or thousands of devices. Prefer Options 1 to 3.

for i in $(seq 1 254); do ping -c1 -W 200 192.168.1.$i >/dev/null 2>&1 & done; wait

Then read the result with the neighbour-table command for your platform in Option 3.

On Linux, arp-scan does both halves in one targeted command. It uses ARP rather than ping, so it is lighter than the sweep above, but it is still active traffic — treat it the same way:

sudo apt install arp-scan          # Debian / Ubuntu
sudo dnf install arp-scan          # RHEL / CentOS / Rocky

sudo arp-scan --interface=eth0 --localnet | grep -i 00:00:01:0A:2B:46 | awk '{print $1}'

Confirm you found the BMC and not a data port

If more than one address is a candidate, this tells you which one is the BMC. It serves a management API:

curl -k https://<candidate_ip>/redfish/v1

The BMC returns a block of JSON. The Secure Edge operating system exposes no open ports, so its data interfaces return nothing.

If nothing is found at all, the BMC is not on this subnet, the cable is in a data port rather than the one marked BMC, or the unit is unpowered.

Step 3 — Open the BMC portal

1. Browse to https://<bmc_ip>.
2. The BMC uses a self-signed certificate. The browser warning is expected — accept it and continue.
3. Sign in with the BMC credentials supplied with your unit. If you do not have them, contact Xyte support.

Overview confirms you are in the right place: it shows the appliance model and serial number, the BMC firmware version, the hostname nanobmc, and — under Network information — the address currently in use.

What the portal gives you

🚧

Operations → Factory reset resets BMC settings. Do not use it unless Xyte support asks you to.

Optional — give the BMC a fixed address

If you would rather not look the address up again:

1. Go to Settings → Network and select the eth0 tab.
2. Under IPv4, turn off DHCP and add a static address, subnet mask and gateway.
3. Save. The session drops — reconnect on the new address.

A DHCP reservation on your own server achieves the same thing without touching the appliance.

If the BMC never gets an IP address

Use the serial console:

1. Connect a Mini-USB cable from BMC CONSOLE to your computer.
2. Open a serial terminal at 115200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control.
   • macOS: ls /dev/tty.usbserial-* then screen /dev/tty.usbserial-XXXX 115200
   • Windows: install the FTDI VCP driver, then use PuTTY in Serial mode
3. Power on the unit and allow about 40 seconds for the BMC to boot.
4. Sign in with the BMC credentials, then set a permanent address from Settings → Network in the portal.

Give the Secure Edge a static IP from the SOL console

The Secure Edge expects to receive its address over DHCP. On a network that has no DHCP server — or where the appliance must keep a fixed address — set the address by hand from the SOL console, which reaches the appliance's operating system even when it has no working network connection at all.

The Secure Edge runs Ubuntu, and its network is configured with netplan.

📘

If you do have a DHCP server, a reservation for the Secure Edge is simpler and safer than the steps below — it achieves the same fixed address without changing anything on the appliance.

Step 1 — Open the console and sign in

1. In the BMC portal, go to Operations → SOL console.
2. Press Enter to wake the login prompt.
3. Sign in with the appliance credentials recorded when the unit was installed. If you do not have them, contact Xyte support.

The prompt shows the machine's hostname, not your username. Run the commands below with sudo, entering the same password when asked.

Step 2 — Find the interface you are configuring

ip -br addr

Each line is one network interface: name, state, addresses. Choose the one that is UP and holds the cable to your network — the two 2.5GbE data ports usually appear as enp1s0 and enp2s0.

🚧

Leave the maintenance-port interface alone. It is reserved for on-site support, and changing it removes that route in. If you are not sure which interface that is, contact Xyte support before making changes.

Step 3 — Write the static configuration

Netplan reads every file in /etc/netplan/ in name order, so a new file numbered 99- overrides the shipped DHCP setting without editing it:

sudo nano /etc/netplan/99-xyte-static.yaml

Enter the following, substituting your own interface name, address, gateway and DNS servers:

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp1s0:
      dhcp4: false
      addresses: [192.168.1.50/24]
      routes:
        - to: default
          via: 192.168.1.1
      nameservers:
        addresses: [192.168.1.1, 8.8.8.8]

• 192.168.1.50/24 is the address you are assigning, with the prefix length of your subnet (/24 = mask 255.255.255.0).
• via: is your gateway — the router the appliance reaches the internet through.
• DNS is required. The appliance resolves eu1.edge.xyte.io, so without working name servers it stays offline even with a correct address.

YAML is indentation-sensitive: two spaces per level, spaces only, never tabs. Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then leave the editor with Ctrl-X.

Netplan expects its files to be readable only by root:

sudo chmod 600 /etc/netplan/99-xyte-static.yaml

Step 4 — Apply it

sudo netplan try

This applies the configuration and rolls it back automatically after 120 seconds unless you confirm by pressing Enter. If it reports an error instead, the file has a syntax or indentation problem — reopen it and correct the line it names.

Once confirmed, make it permanent:

sudo netplan apply

Step 5 — Check it works

ip -br addr show enp1s0          # the new address is listed
ping -c3 192.168.1.1             # the gateway answers
getent hosts eu1.edge.xyte.io    # DNS resolves
curl -sI https://eu1.edge.xyte.io | head -1   # port 443 is reachable

With all four succeeding, the Edge reconnects on its own within a few minutes — confirm it in the Xyte portal under Connections → Edges. If it is still offline after ten minutes, restart the appliance from Operations → Server power operations.

Reverting to DHCP

sudo rm /etc/netplan/99-xyte-static.yaml
sudo netplan apply

Troubleshooting