Monday 23 January 2012

First Look at Dell’s iDRAC 6 Enterprise – Full KVM Over IP

We are working with a new Dell R510 2U server that will be used as a host for a virtualized SBS 2011, Remote Desktop Services, SQL, and other services.

We first log into the iDRAC console via the server’s POST sequence at the console. We have initially set up the iDRAC to pull an IP from the local DHCP server until we are ready to set it up with a public IP and DNS A record.

We then set up the username and password for the iDRAC.

Once done we rebooted the system and verified that it was pulling an IP from DHCP which it was. In our Web browser we were greeted with:

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Once we were logged in we were able to view all of the

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When we tried to launch the KVM over IP console we received the following:

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As many ways as we tried we could not get the native ActiveX to work so we flipped the setting over to Java:

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We were then good to go with the Java version spooling up:

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Note that the file is transferring to the local client via HTTPS.

Once the transfer was complete we had console access to the newly powered up server:

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We were then good to go with flattening the default RAID 5 arrays that Dell dropped onto the H700 RAID controller to set up our RAID 10 array and run with it.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I’m new to setting up Ilo so I may be wrong but anyway is this the right order? I call up the ISP get a static IP I enter the static IP into ILO I enter the ILO license and then go to godaddy after installing SBS and create an A record? And get an SSL cert could you blog about this in detail? Thanks confused newbie

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Hi,

iLO, iDRAC, RMM, or others use an ISP provided IP that is bound to its NIC.

The IP for SBS services like RWA, OWA, and others is a different IP altogether.

Philip

Absoblogginlutely! said...

We've had weird luck getting the console working with the various java/activex components - it sometimes takes a couple of different browsers before we get one that works.
One cool thing that Dell has is automatica recording of the post/boot sequences up to the OS taking over, so if the enduser insists they didn't touch anything or you need to review what a junior tech did, you can go back and see what changes were done. I think it records the last two boots if I remember correctly.
Also for anonymous, you don't need a certificate and typically you portforward either a secondary ip or a different port on your router to your server. HIGHLY recommend you are at least locking down the access to your home ip and ensuring you change the default username and password on the drac - otherwise you are in for a very nasty surprise.

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Java seems to be stable in IE8 so far.

This iDRAC will be getting a public IP and SSL via GoDaddy.

We always use non-descript usernames and passwords from all over the place when it comes to any type of admin access.

Port forwarding seems to break the KVM over IP ... at least we have never managed to make it work stable compared to just plugging it into a switch with a public IP.

Thanks for the comments,

Philip