White Papers

Executive summary
4 iDRAC Service Module – OS based capabilities for Out-of-band management with iDRAC9 | 469
Executive summary
The traditional approach to server systems management has been an agent-based approach to manage the
server. These legacy ‘in-band’ agents required greater CPU and memory cycles and were heavy weight. Dell
EMC first introduced full agent free architecture in 2012 with iDRAC (integrated Dell Remote Access Controller).
The iDRAC9 has greatly reduced the need for in-band agents and has led to the modern way of server systems
management via out-of-band management.
However, there are still some OS dependent capabilities the use of an in-band module. This paper discusses the
unique value that iSM brings to out-of-band management with iDRAC9 for these key OS-based capabilities.