White Papers

Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter: Enabling a Dell Server for Server Management in vCenter

Introduction

The Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter is a virtual appliance that can be used to reduce

tools and tasks associated with management and deployment of Dell servers in your virtual

environment. The plug-in reduces complexity by natively integrating key management capabilities into

the vCenter console, and minimizes risk with hardware alarms, streamlined firmware updates, and

deep visibility into inventory, health, and warranty details.

The Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter is designed to streamline the management processes

in your data center environment by allowing you to use VMware vCenter to manage your entire

infrastructure—both physical and virtual. From firmware updates to bare metal deployment, the Dell

Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter will expand and enrich your data center management

experience with Dell PowerEdge servers.

This whitepaper provides the information you need to prepare a Dell Server for server management in

vCenter using the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter. We describe the steps you will take to

set up a connection profile for Dell hosts in a vCenter, run an inventory, and fix compliance issues on

those hosts.

Audience and scope

This whitepaper is intended for sale engineers, field application engineers, test engineers, architects,

or IT administrators who are involved in the decision-making process for the design, configuration, and

operation of a dynamic datacenter. The scope of this document is to provide a detailed procedure that

describes setting up a Dell Server for server management in vCenter. This document is intended to

assist users in using the Dell Management Plug-in for managing vSphere hosts that are Dell Servers in a

vCenter.

Prerequisites

Readers are expected to have a working knowledge of networking, VMware vSphere, virtual networking

concepts, Windows™ W2KR8, and the Linux environment. Software requirements are VMware ESX/ESXi

4.0 or later host installation and VMware vCenter.

Readers are expected to know how to install a VMware ESX/ESXi hypervisor on a server and how to add

it to a vCenter as a vSphere host.

Readers are also expected to know how to install Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter and

be found in Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter User’s Guide.

Steps to enable Dell servers for management

User need to perform the following steps in order to start managing Dell hosts from the ‘Dell Server

Management’ tab in vSphere Client:

1. Create a connection profile and associate the Dell hosts

2. Run hardware inventory on Dell hosts so that necessary hardware information is collected

3. Fix any compliance issues that are reported by vSphere Host Compliance