Users Guide

5
Hardware Management
Prerequisites:
To successfully perform hardware provisioning and deployment, the physical servers must appear in the Deployment
Wizard. All physical servers must meet the following prerequisites:
• See the Dell Management Plug-In for VMWare vCenter Release Notes for specific hardware support
information.
• The server must have the minimum supported versions of iDRAC firmware, Lifecycle controller and BIOS. See
the Dell Management Plug- in for VMWare vCenter Release Notes for specific hardware support information.
NOTE: If the firmware versions are outdated, a two step upgrade process could be required. See the
firmware documentation for detailed upgrade instructions.
• The Dell Management Plug-in supports deployment using only embedded/integrated LOMs. You can configure
NICs in PCI slots manually after the deployment. If using add-on NICs, the system must have the host LOMs
enabled.
• The Dell Management Plug-in allows deployment onto Internal Dual SD Module (hypervisor only) or local hard
drives. Before you install hypervisor to an Internal Dual SD Module, it must have a maximum of 1 or 2 GB of
storage. The Internal Dual SD Module must be enabled from BIOS before you deploy the hypervisor with the Dell
Management Plug-in. You can change the management NIC manually, and add the system to vCenter.
• If the iDRAC is in dedicated mode, its NIC must be enabled to communicate with the Dell Management Plug-in.
• CSIOR must be enabled. Additionally, before initiating Auto Discovery, to make sure that retrieved data is
current, the system must be completely powered off and then back on (hard reboot).
• Dell servers can be ordered with Auto Discovery and handshake options pre-configured by the factory. If a
server is not pre-configured with these options, you must manually enter the Dell Management Plug-In IP
address or configure your local network to provide this information.
• If the Dell Management Plug-in is not used for hardware configuration, then make sure the following conditions
are met prior to initiating hypervisor deployment:
– Enable the VT (Virtualization Technology) flag in the BIOS.
– Set the system's boot order to either a bootable Virtual Disk or an Internal Dual SD Module for operating
system installation.
• If the Dell Management Plug-in is used for hardware configuration, the BIOS setting for VT is automatically
enabled, even if BIOS configuration is not part of the hardware profile. Express/Clone RAID configuration is
required if a virtual disk is not already present on the target system.
• If your servers are from versions prior to Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers, then the deployment process
installs the OpenManage Server Administrator package on the target system, and automatically configures the
SNMP trap destination to point to the Dell Management Plug-in.
• Custom ESXi images that contain all the Dell drivers are required for deployment. You can find the correct
images by going to the Dell Drivers & Downloads page and saving the custom images to a location you can
access during the deployment process. For the most up-to date list of supported ESXi versions for this release,
see the Release Notes.
Provisioning Overview
Once a physical inventory of the datacenter is complete, all auto-discovered bare-metal systems are available to the
Dell Management Plug-in for zero touch hardware provisioning and hypervisor deployment. To prepare for provisioning
and deployment, you must:
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