Server and method of identifying unsupported drives in a server

A method of identifying an unsupported storage device on a server, the method comprising:

• providing the server with a baseboard management controller (BMC), the server storing one or more approved vital product data (VPD),
• providing a plurality of storage devices on the server, the storage devices each having its respective VPD stored thereon,
• the BMC obtaining, from each storage device via an inter-integrated circuit (I2C) device and an I2C multiplexer operative connected to each of the storage devices, at least one piece of the VPD stored on each of the storage devices, wherein the at least one piece of VPD is obtained from each storage device via a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) controller or a host bus adapter (HBA) controller in the server via a management component transport protocol (MCTP) over peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe),
• the BMC comparing the at least one piece of the VPD obtained from each storage device to the one or more approved VPD, and
• taking action at the BMC, via the I2C device and the I2C multiplexer, to communicate an output, restrict interaction by the server with one of the storage devices, or permit interaction by the server with one of the storage devices, based on the comparison.