Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Dell Technical Whitepaper

Vineeth Valambra Ashish Suyal Product Group Enterprise

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

This document is for informational purposes only and may contain typographical errors and technical inaccuracies. The content is provided as is, without express or implied warranties of any kind. 2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell and its affiliates cannot be responsible for errors or omissions in typography or photography. Dell, the Dell logo, OpenManage, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. November 2011| Rev 1.0

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Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Contents
Executive summary ..................................................................................................... 4 What is Dell OpenManage Essentials? ............................................................................... 4 Scope of the document ................................................................................................ 4 What is Dell modular chassis? ........................................................................................ 4 Dell CMC, DRAC/MC, blade, and switch discovery ................................................................ 6 Discovering CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, or switches .............................................................. 6 Managing Dell modular chassis from OpenManage Essentials ................................................... 7 Viewing modular chassis components from OpenManage Essentials ........................................ 7 Updating CMC firmware from OpenManage Essentials ........................................................ 9 Summary ............................................................................................................... 10 Learn more............................................................................................................. 10

Figures
Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Figure 5. Discovery Range Configuration .......................................................................... 6 SNMP Configuration ........................................................................................ 7 View of modular chassis components ................................................................... 8 Viewing inventory and alerts ............................................................................. 9 Dell OpenManage Essentials System Update ........................................................ 10

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Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Executive summary
This document explains how to manage multiple Dell chassis and blades remotely using Dell Open Manage Essentials. Dell OpenManage Essentials provides a single view to make management of Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC), Dell Remote Access Controller/Modular Chassis (DRAC/MC), and its blades and switches easier.

What is Dell OpenManage Essentials?

Dell OpenManage Essentials is a light weight, web-based, one-to-many system management application that provides a comprehensive view of all Dell systems, devices, and components within the enterprises network or datacenter. To download OpenManage Essentials, refer to: http://www.delltechcenter.com/OME For OpenManage Essentials Installation Guide, refer to: Installing Dell OpenManage Essentials

Scope of the document

This document describes the management of Dell CMC, DRAC/MC, blades and its switches from a single console using Dell OpenManage Essentials. This includes: Discovery and inventory of Dell CMC, blades, and switches Health monitoring, application launch, and reception of alerts Updating CMC firmware

What is Dell modular chassis?

The Dell PowerEdge modular blade chassis is a centralized device used to host and manage multiple blades in a single enclosure for provisioning of power, cooling, management, and other functions. Dell CMC and DRAC/MC are a systems management hardware and software solution for managing Dell blade chassis. The CMC is a hot-pluggable module that provides a secure web browser based interface, remote management capabilities, crashed system recovery, and power control functions. Click the following link for more information about Dell modular chassis and blades: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps3q05-20050163-Brundridge-OE.pdf Click the following link for more information about Dell Chassis Management Controller: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/cmc/index.htm

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials Click the following link for more information about Dell Remote Access Controller/Modular Chassis: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/dracmc/index.htm

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Dell CMC, DRAC/MC, blade, and switch discovery

For an IT Administrator, it is difficult to manage multiple CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches. Dell OpenManage Essentials provides a single console to view and manage multiple CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches. Management tasks from Dell OpenManage Essentials include retrieving inventory details, receiving SNMP alerts, monitoring health, updating firmware, etc. To manage CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches from OpenManage Essentials, they should be discovered using their relevant protocols. Both CMC and DRAC/MC support SNMP protocol. To manage CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches the following prerequisites must be met: SNMP must be enabled and configured in CMC Every blade must have the relevant protocol enabled. The protocol to be used is dependent on the operating system of the blade server. Blades can be discovered and managed either by their server IP address or by the blades DRAC/iDRAC IP address (out-of-band management) SNMP must be enabled and configured for modular switches.

For more details about protocol configuration please refer to the online help in OME.

Discovering CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, or switches

1. Launch OpenManage Essentials. 2. Select Add Discovery Range from the Manage => Discovery and Inventory menu. 3. Enter the IP address / range, or Host name for a CMC, DRAC/MC, blade and switch (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Discovery Range Configuration

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials 4. Click Add. 5. Click Next. 6. On the ICMP Configuration screen, enter the ping time out and ping re-tries values. 7. Click Next. 8. On the SNMP Configuration screen (Figure 2), enter the Get community string for SNMP. The community string should be the same as the community string configured for the particular device. The Timeout and Retries values for SNMP can also be configured.

Figure 2.

SNMP Configuration

9. Click Finish to start the discovery process.

Managing Dell modular chassis from OpenManage Essentials

Viewing modular chassis components from OpenManage Essentials

Once the discovery of CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches is complete, customers can view and manage these devices using OpenManage Essentials. Discovered modular chassis (along with CMC, blades and switches) is categorized under Modular Systems as shown in Figure 3. Each modular chassis corresponds to a sub-group under Modular Systems. The modular switches of the chassis are displayed in the Switches node and the modular blades are displayed in the Servers node.

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Figure 3.

View of modular chassis components

The right hand side grid details shown in Figure 3 can be exported in following formats, CSV HTML XML

Right-click on the grid and select Export to export the required data.

Inventory
Inventory details of CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches can be viewed by selecting the corresponding node in the tree as shown in Figure 4. CMC and DRAC/MC inventory also includes the slot information. Slot information is available only if CMC firmware version is higher than 4.0. To know more about discovery and inventory, refer to: Understanding Discovery and Inventory of Dell Devices

Alerts
Dell OpenManage Essentials receives SNMP alerts for events occurring with CMC, DRAC/MC, modular blades, and modular switches. View alerts by selecting a node and clicking Alerts as shown in Figure 4.

Monitoring
Health status of the CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches is shown at tree node and at corresponding Device Summary and Software Agent Information table of each device as shown in Figure 4.

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Figure 4.

Viewing inventory and alerts

Application Launch
Application Launch option launches CMC console, Switch console, Blade Servers OMSA console, RAC console, etc. This helps customers for further details about current health status or to configure CMC, blade, or switch. To launch a remote console, select the device from the tree node or from the right hand side grid entry and select the Application Launch option. Customer can also click the hyper link in the Software Agent Information table for remote console launch. Application Launch also has an option to view and renew a warranty. This option connects to the Dell Support site to view the device warranty and renew if necessary. Click the following link for more information about using the CMC console: http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/videos~en/Documents~blade_techcenter_cmcdemo_640x480.flv.aspx

Updating CMC firmware from OpenManage Essentials

Dell OpenManage Essentials can be used to update the firmware of all the managed Dell CMC devices to the latest version released by Dell. The following prerequisites have to be met in order to update the CMC: The CMC has been discovered and inventoried The latest catalog.cab has been imported from Dell FTP(ftp.dell.com)

Dell OpenManage Essentials has a single view where all the devices and their respective updatable components are displayed. System Update has two panes as shown in Figure 5. Pane 1 lists all the devices that can be updated. On selection of the device, the list of components to be updated is displayed in Pane 2. CMC is listed as any other device along with its firmware details. NOTE: Chassis and blade association is not shown in the system update reports. Users have to manually select the chassis and associated blades to view and apply the applicable updates.

Managing Dell Blade and Chassis Using Dell OpenManage Essentials

Figure 5.

Dell OpenManage Essentials System Update

1. Select System Update from the Manage menu. 2. Click Select a Catalog Source to import the catalog.cab file. 3. CMC requiring the upgrade is listed on the Non-Compliant Systems tab. Devices are listed under the Non-Compliant Systems tab if any of its components can be upgraded, otherwise the device is listed on the Complaint Systems tab. 4. Select all CMCs that require an update.

5. Click Apply and provide the upgrade task details.

Summary
Dell OpenManage Essentials provides following features to manage CMC, DRAC/MC, blades, and switches: Discovery and inventory Classification Health and connection state monitoring Reception and management of device alerts Application launch from within the OpenManage Essentials Firmware update of multiple CMC and blade servers.

Learn more
Visit Dell.com/PowerEdge for more information on Dells enterprise-class servers.

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