Over the last year Google Analytics says I’ve been getting a lot of hits from search that indicate there are some folks who want to know how the C-series DRAC works.

It is easy enough to setup like any other IPMI/DRAC system.

First you’ll need to plug the IPMI/Management Ethernet port into your network (preferably an our of band (OOB) network seperate from your production network). In the BIOS, make sure the management port is set to ‘Dedicated’, earlier ones shipped with it set to ‘Shared’ by default which precluded the dedicated IPMI port.

From the rear, the port can be found here:

 

On the node you’ll need ipmitool.

yum -y install OpenIPMI OpenIPMI-tools

Fire it up.

/etc/init.d/ipmi start

Set up IPMI on the node

ipmitool -I open lan set 1 ipsrc static
ipmitool -I open lan set 1 ipaddr IP.ADDR.YOU.WANT
ipmitool -I open lan set 1 netmask 255.255.255.0
ipmitool -I open lan set 1 defgw ipaddr GW.OF.OOB.NETWORK
ipmitool -I open lan set 1 access on
ipmitool -I open lan set 1 snmp SNMP_COMMUNITY_STRING
ipmitool -I open lan set 1 password SNMP PASSWORD
ipmitool -I open user set password 2 IPMI_PASSWORD

Confirm it all took:

[root@node:~]# ipmitool lan print
Set in Progress         : Set Complete
Auth Type Support       : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD 
Auth Type Enable        : Callback : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD 
                        : User     : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD 
                        : Operator : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD 
                        : Admin    : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD 
                        : OEM      : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD 
IP Address Source       : Static Address
IP Address              : 10.10.10.10
Subnet Mask             : 255.255.255.0
MAC Address             : 12:34:46:78:90:ab
SNMP Community String   : oob_community_string
IP Header               : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x08
BMC ARP Control         : ARP Responses Enabled, Gratuitous ARP Disabled
Gratituous ARP Intrvl   : 2.0 seconds
Default Gateway IP      : 10.10.10.1
Default Gateway MAC     : 00:00:00:00:00:00
Backup Gateway IP       : 0.0.0.0
Backup Gateway MAC      : 00:00:00:00:00:00
802.1q VLAN ID          : Disabled
802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0
RMCP+ Cipher Suites     : 0,1,2,3
Cipher Suite Priv Max   : uaaaXXXXXXXXXXX
                        :     X=Cipher Suite Unused
                        :     c=CALLBACK
                        :     u=USER
                        :     o=OPERATOR
                        :     a=ADMIN
                        :     O=OEM

Now you can hit it via the regular ipmi tools:

Power:

Power cycle a remote node.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis power cycle

Power off (hard). This cuts power like yanking the plug.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis power off

How to power off (soft). Sends an ACPI shutdown signal, which is like pressing the power button for an orderly shutdown.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis power soft

System Event Log:

Return a listing of all entries.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a sel list 

Use the two digit code from the listing to get the entry.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a sel get 0x<ID> 

Power on Hours counter.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 192.168.252.161 -a chassis poh

Set the BIOS to power on the node automatically when power is restored.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis policy always-on

Set the BIOS to boot from PXE on next boot.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis bootdev pxe

Set the BIOS to boot from the first hard disk on next boot.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis bootdev disk

Get device info and serial.

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a fru

And finally, a super important one for locating nodes in a rack full of super-dense chassis, you can blink the status LED on the node thus

ipmitool -I lan -U root -H 10.10.10.10 -a chassis identify

This is all fun and good, but you can also hit it as a web interface to hit the MegaRAC.

Note: C6100s (and other Dell C-series) don’t use the regular dell BIOS, but use an American Megatrends (AMI) BIOS, so thier DRAC is duely named the MegaRAC.

You can browse on over to it via it’s IP, initially using http://OOB.IP.OF.NODE

Then you can login as root with the pasword you set with ipmitool

You can get all sorts of the same data from this that you can get from the cli with ipmitool, but the main thing is going to the ‘Remote Control’ tab across the top.

There you have power control, same as ipmitool gives you, but even better is the ‘Console Redirection’ which spawns a little Java KVM instance, much like the DRAC and Dell/Avocent KVMs do.

It’ll ask you to download a jviewer.jnlp file, which you open up with Java’s Web Start:

That’s it. now you have some sweet remote control options for your Dell C-series.