OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter: Discovery of Dell Bare-Metal Servers This Dell technical white paper describes how to discover Dell PowerEdge 11th Generation or later bare metal servers into the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter for hypervisor deployment using vSphere Desktop Client.
Revisions (2.0) Date Description August 2013 Initial release October 2013 Ported to new Dell template THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this material in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell.
Table of contents Revisions (2.0) .................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Executive summary .......................................................................................................................................................................... 4 1 Introduction ........................................................................................
Executive summary The OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter is a virtual appliance that streamlines tools and tasks associated with the management and deployment of Dell servers in your virtual environment. It reduces complexity by natively integrating the key management capabilities into the VMware vCenter console.
1 Introduction This white paper briefly discusses manually discovering servers into the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter using the vSphere Desktop client, and discusses Auto-Discovery. The Auto-Discovery section outlines the requirements for adding servers to the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter, discusses the processes available to reduce administrative effort, and provides information about how to configure your environment for Auto-Discovery.
2 Prerequisites Before attempting to discover Dell PowerEdge 11th or 12th Generation bare-metal servers, first follow the installation instructions for the Dell OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter. Only Dell PowerEdge 11th Generation or later servers with iDRAC express or iDRAC enterprise can be discovered into the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter’s pool of bare-metal servers.
3 Manual discovery The Add Server button in the Select Servers section of the Deployment Wizard provides a method of specifying a server’s iDRAC IP address and credentials. This manual discovery process is suitable for importing a small quantity of servers where configuration of the servers and environment for AutoDiscovery is not practical. Figure 1 7 Manual discovery.
4 Auto-Discovery Auto-Discovery is a Lifecycle Controller feature for setting up a new server and registering it using a console. The advantages of using this capability includes removing the need to do cumbersome manual local configuration of a new server and enabling an automated way for a console to discover a new server that was connected to the network and plugged into power. 4.1 Process overview Auto-Discovery is sometimes referred to as Discovery and Handshake after the process it performs.
• Power: You must connect the server to the power outlet; however, the server does not need to be powered on. • Network connectivity: The server’s iDRAC must have network connectivity and must communicate with the provisioning server over port 4433. You can obtain the IP address using a DHCP server or manually specified in the iDRAC Configuration Utility. • Additional network settings: If using DHCP, enable the Get DNS server address from DHCP setting so that DNS name resolution can occur.
5 Disabling account access You must disable administrative account access to the iDRAC and if there are any iDRAC accounts with administrator privileges, you must disable them first from within the iDRAC Web console. Note that the discovery process does not run if the admin accounts are enabled. Once Auto-Discovery completes successfully, the administrative iDRAC account is enabled. 5.1 Disabling administrative account access 5.1.1 For Dell PowerEdge 11th Generation servers: 1.
Figure 3 5.2 12th Generation Server, enabling Auto-Discovery Disabling accounts with the administrator role Auto-Discovery does not run if the administrator accounts are enabled on the iDRAC. From the iDRAC Web console you can add additional administrator accounts. Any additional accounts you may have enabled must be disabled through the iDRAC Web console before Auto-Discovery can run.
Figure 4 5.3 12th Generation Server, disabling an account Enabling Auto-Discovery You can manually initiate Auto-Discovery using the iDRAC console on the server. You can enable AutoDiscovery automatically by ordering it shipped from factory in the enabled state, (See Ordering AutoDiscovery enabled systems ), or you can initiated from a WSM-MAN command. For Auto-Discovery to run, all administrative accounts on the iDRAC must be disabled. 5.3.
5.3.2 Manually configuring a PowerEdge 11th Generation server for AutoDiscovery To manually configure a PowerEdge 11th Generation server for Auto-Discovery, do the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 5.4 Press when prompted within 5 seconds during system start-up. In the iDRAC Configuration Utility page, enable NIC (for modular system only). Enable DHCP. Navigate to LAN Parameters. Select Domain Name from DHCP. Select On. Select DNS Server from DHCP. Select On.
6 Undiscovering or deleting bare-metal servers You can delete discovered bare-metal servers from the bare-metal servers list by clicking on the Remove Server button, shown below. Figure 6 Removing a discovered bare-metal server It opens another dialog box where you can select one or more servers to delete. After selecting the servers, click Remove Selected Servers to remove bare-metal servers permanently from the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter.
Figure 7 15 Manually removing discovered servers OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter: Discovery of Dell Bare-Metal Servers
7 Troubleshooting 7.1 The IDRAC trace log You can obtain information about the Auto-Discovery process by examining the iDRAC trace log of the system that is attempting Auto-Discovery. Access this log in several ways, such as using the RACLOG or using the troubleshooting section of the iDRAC Web console, and invoking racadm gettracelog and look for messages with the source idrac_discovery.
8 Conclusion The OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter has features that simplify the deployment of hypervisors to Dell PowerEdge 11th Generation and later bare-metal servers. You can manually add servers to the pool of bare-metal servers one at a time. The process can be automated for larger rollouts by ordering the servers pre-configured to arrive from the factory ready for Auto-Discovery.
A Configuring advanced security features A.1 Adding service tags to the white list The white list is a list of service tags. If white list validation is turned on, only servers with matching service tags in the list are allowed to make the connection to the provisioning server. You can add the white list servers from the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter -> Dell Management Center-> Settings>Security section. Select the Edit button on the Server White List page.
The iDRAC handshake client certificate is signed with a Dell certificate authority root certificate for which the public key is made available by Dell to console software partners that incorporate an Auto-Discovery Provisioning Server. It is generated during the factory build of the server and is unique to every system. The default hostname (Common Name) embedded in the handshake client certificate is the service tag of the server.
