Reference Guide
● PowerEdge FX2/FX2s—The FX2 enclosure enables servers and storage to share power, cooling, management, and
networking. It includes redundant Power Supply Units (1100 W, 1600 W, 2000 W, and 2400 W) and eight cooling fans. With a
compact highly flexible design, the FX2 chassis lets you efficiently add resources to your infrastructure when and where you
need them, so you can let demand and budget determine your level of investment. The FX2 enclosure also offers I/O
modules to several IO aggregators that can simplify cabling, improve East/West traffic within the server, and enable LAN/
SAN convergence—reducing cost and complexity.
For more information about CMC, see https://www.dell.com/support/article/sln311283.
iDRAC embedded management APIs
iDRAC provides a range of standards-based applications programming interfaces (APIs) that enable scalable and automated
management of the PowerEdge servers. Standard systems management APIs have been developed by organizations such as the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). These APIs are widely
used by commercial systems management products and by custom programs and scripts developed by IT staff to automate
management functions such as discovery, inventory, health status checking, configuration, update, and power management. The
APIs supported by iDRAC include:
● iDRAC RESTful API: It provides a RESTful interface that expands upon the DMTF Redfish standard with the Dell EMC
operations. It includes the RESTful server configuration, modular server feature support, and detailed OS networking
inventory and status.
● iDRAC RESTful API—with Redfish support: In 2015, the DMTF Scalable platforms Management Forum published iDRAC
RESTful API—with Redfish support. It is an open industry-standard specification and schema designed to meet the needs of
IT administrators for simple, modern, and secure management of scalable platform hardware. Dell EMC is a key contributor
to the iDRAC RESTful API standard, acting as cochair of the SPMF, promoting the benefits of iDRAC RESTful API, and
working to deliver those benefits within industry-leading systems management solutions. iDRAC RESTful API is a next
generation management standard using a data model representation inside a hypermedia RESTful interface. The data model
is defined in terms of a standard, machine-readable schema, with the payload of the messages expressed in JSON and the
OData v4 protocol.
● WSMan: The Web Services For Management (WSMan) API, first published by the DMTF in 2008, is the most mature and
robust API provided by iDRAC. WSMan uses a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) with data modeled using the Common
Information Model. WSMan provides interoperability between management applications and managed resources, and
identifies a core set of web service specifications and usage requirements that expose a common set of operations central to
all systems management.
NOTE: WSMan has been deprecated and no longer supported.
● IPMI: The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a message-based, hardware-level interface specification that
can operate over both LAN and serial interfaces. IPMI is supported broadly by server vendors, systems management
solutions, and open source software.
● SNMP: The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) helps in standardizing the management of network devices.
SNMP allows commercial management consoles created for monitoring network switches and routers to also monitor X86
severs. SNMP is primarily used to deliver event messages to alert administrators of problems on their systems but can also
be used to discover, inventory, and configure servers.
To help in automating system management tasks and simplify API integration, Dell EMC provides the PowerShell and Python
libraries and script examples using the iDRAC RESTful API with Redfish and WSMan interfaces. These libraries and examples are
available in the Dell GitHub repository at https://www.github.com/dell. The iDRAC pages offers a library of technical white
papers detailing the use of the embedded management APIs. For more information, see https://www.dell.com/support/
article/sln311300 and https://www.dell.com/support/article/sln311809.
Dell EMC Update Utilities
The following table lists the update utilities and the supported operating systems.
Table 2. Dell EMC Update Utilities
Product Windows Linux
Dell EMC Repository Manager Yes Yes
Dell EMC Update Packages Yes Yes
Dell EMC Server Update Utility Yes Yes
Systems Management Product Overview 13