Dell Lifecycle Controller Remote Services v2.70.70.
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Contents 1 Introduction................................................................................................................................. 5 Advantages of using Lifecycle Controller........................................................................................................................... 5 Benefits of using iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller............................................................................................................ 5 Key features...................
Viewing the managed computer system using the Physical Computer System View...........................19 Job management..................................................................................................................................................................19 Job types........................................................................................................................................................................ 20 System status..................................
1 Introduction Dell Lifecycle Controller provides advanced embedded systems management to perform systems management tasks such as deploy, configure, update, maintain, and diagnose. It is delivered as part of integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) out-of-band solution and embedded Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) applications in the latest Dell servers.
• • • Improved Productivity and Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) — Extending the reach of administrators to larger numbers of distant servers can make IT staff more productive while driving down operational costs such as travel. Enhanced Security— By providing secure access to remote servers, administrators can perform critical management functions while maintaining server and network security.
several tools. For example, the most common tasks such as provisioning, deploying, and updating required not only multiple tools and multiple media format, but also searching the Web for tools such as drivers and firmware. This traditional delivery model resulted in inefficient use of time, potential errors, and possible security risks. Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services addresses all these system management issues.
Lifecycle controller also supports local one-to-one system management tasks through a graphical user interface (GUI) using the server’s KVM or the Virtual Console in iDRAC for operating system installation, updates, configuration, and for running diagnostics on single and local servers. This eliminates the need for multiple option ROMs for hardware configuration. For more information, see Lifecycle Controller User’s Guide, available at www.delltechcenter.com/lc.
• • • • • • • • • • • The Lifecycle Controller Online Help provides information about the fields available on the GUI and the descriptions for the same. To view the online help information in Lifecycle Controller user interface, click Help in the upper-right corner, or press . The Lifecycle Controller Release Notes is available with the product. To read the Release Notes in Lifecycle Controller user interface, click About , and then click View Release Notes.
• • Enterprise Applications • Enterprise Systems Management • Public Sector Solutions • Utilities • Mainframe • Serviceability Tools • Virtualization Solutions • Operating Systems • Support 4. To view a document, click the required product and then click the required version. Using search engines: • Type the name and version of the document in the search box.
2 Remote Services Features Using Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services, you can perform the following operations: • • • • Deploy and Configure Monitor Maintain Create and schedule jobs Topics: • • • • Deployment and configuration Monitor Maintain Job management Deployment and configuration Using various Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services' capabilities, you can perform different configurations on a system throughout its lifecycle.
• • Get and set any configurable iDRAC attribute Manage iDRAC user accounts RAID configuration The RAID configuration feature is used to manage the properties and capabilities of the RAID storage. The RAID storage is modeled using a collection of attributes, where there are collections for the enclosures, storage adapters, logical disks, physical disk drives, and PCIeSSD devices. Also, there is a configuration service that contains all the methods used to configure the RAID storage.
NIC configuration Network Interface Controller (NIC) configuration feature is used to set up or modify configuration settings for supported NIC cards (for example, Intel, QLogic, and Broadcom). These configuration settings can be set or updated both locally and remotely using Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services.
Configuring advanced security using hash password You can set user passwords and BIOS passwords using a one-way hash format in iDRAC available on the 13th generation Dell PowerEdge servers. The user authentication mechanism is not affected (except for SNMPv3 and IPMI) and you can provide the password in plain text format. With the new password hash feature, you can: • • Generate your own SHA256 hashes to set iDRAC user passwords and BIOS passwords.
• • Enable—Hardware inventory and configuration information is collected on every system restart. Collecting system inventory may affect the boot time depending on the hardware present in the system. Disable—Hardware inventory and configuration information is not collected on every system restart. The usage of many features depends on the inventory information updates. Features such as Easy Restore and Part Replacement may not contain the latest information when CSIOR is disabled.
Firmware inventory Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services provide information about each of the component firmware installed on the target system and the available firmware images are cached in the Lifecycle Controller.
Server configuration profiles—export or import Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services can export or import a Server Configuration Profiles file. The export operation collects the configuration information for BIOS, iDRAC, RAID, NIC, FC-HBA, System, and Lifecycle Controller and stores it in a single file that is copied to a local file or a network share.
Firmware update You can update or rollback component firmware from a network resource. A rollback operation is used to install the previous version of a component firmware. It also provides the ability to update using a repository and schedule automatic updates. Follow the order below to update or rollback a firmware: 1. 2. 3. 4. Initiate and download an image. Create a reboot job. Schedule an update job. Monitor a job until the job is finished.
Retire or repurpose the server By using the Retire or Repurpose feature, you can delete server-related data such as system configuration, logs, PERC NV cache (if available), and so on. However, an iDRAC license cannot be deleted by using this feature. Use LC-Remote Services to delete information about the following: • • • • • BIOS iDRAC LC Data Diagnostics Driver Pack The user information is permanently deleted and you cannot retrieve the information.
• • Reporting all Jobs — Report all jobs using a single command. Reporting scheduled Jobs — Generate a report of all scheduled jobs using a selection filter of JobStatus = Scheduled. Job types There are two types of jobs — system-created jobs (implicit) and user-created jobs (explicit). • • System-created jobs are created when you run specific Remote Services tasks.
3 Getting started with API collateral and links Getting started with any feature of Lifecycle Controller begins at the Dell TechCenter Lifecycle Controller home page — www.delltechcenter.com/lc. The home page contains various sections that reference URLs, and these referenced URLs are direct links to the corresponding sections. You can follow these steps to get started using the Lifecycle Controller API: 1. 2. 3. 4. Identify the feature or the required management operation.
Profile Name Description CPU The DCIM CPU Profile describes the properties and interfaces for running system management tasks related to the management of processors within a system. Ethernet Port The Ethernet Port Profile extends the management capability of referencing profiles by adding the ability to represent an Ethernet port, its associated controller, and Ethernet interfaces.
Profile Name Description License Management The License Management Profile is an autonomous profile for modeling the Dell Product License Manager (License Manager). It extends the management capabilities of referencing profiles by adding the capability to represent the devices and Licenses managed by the Dell Product Licensing Manager. Memory The DCIM Memory Profile describes the properties and interfaces for running system management tasks related to the management of memories (DIMMs) within a system.
Profile Name Description Service Processor The DCIM Service Processor Profile describes the properties and interfaces for running system management tasks related to the management of the service processor and iDRAC. Simple NIC The Simple NIC Profile extends the management capabilities of referencing profiles by adding the capability to represent the configuration of NIC network controllers.
XML schema description An XML schema (also known as XSD) is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constraints are generally expressed using some combination of grammatical rules governing the order of elements. NOTE: To access the XSD, use the link en.community.dell.
• • Attributes Server Configuration Profiles NOTE: To access the Lifecycle Controller XML Schema Guide, use the link en.community.dell.com/techcenter/ extras/m/white_papers/20270305 Redfish Redfish is a web-based API which implies that resources are accessed using client supplied URLs. URLs are required to identify Redfish resources. The Redfish API uses a simple URL hierarchy which follows a /redfish/v1/ pattern for all resources.
Lifecycle Controller and iDRAC white papers To access the white papers about Lifecycle Controller and iDRAC, go to www.delltechcenter.com/lc.
4 Integrating the Lifecycle Controller API This section outlines the resources required to integrate the Lifecycle Controller API into an application: • • • • • API Clients– Lists the API clients that are available to support WinRM or WSMAN. The API clients enable a you to create an application in a variety of programming languages. Best Practices Guide— Provides information about the common work flows, where in ready-to-use Python scripts are provided for all the common work flows.
• iDRAC REST API with Redfish Github repository — https://github.com/dell/iDRAC-Redfish-Scripting Applications using Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services The following applications use Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services • • • • Dell Compellent | Fluid Data Network Storage Solution —www.dell.com/community/Compellent/bd-p/Compellent Dell Lifecycle Controller Integration v2.0 for System Center Configuration Manager —dell.
5 Social media reference To obtain the most up-to-date information, go to the Dell TechCenter and search for the required information. Table 4. Product Information Product Name and topic Link on Dell TechCenter Lifecycle Controller en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/1979.lifecycle-controller.aspx integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/3204.dell-remote-accesscontroller-drac-idrac.
6 Terms and definitions The following table lists the terms used in this document and their definitions. Table 5. Terms and definitions Term Definition LC Lifecycle Controller Enumerate Refers to WS-MAN ENUMERATE operation as described in Section 8.2 of DSP0226_V1.1 and Section 9.1 of DSP0227_V1.0 Get Refers to WS-MAN GET operation as defined in Section 7.3 of DSP00226_V1.1 and Section 7.1 of DSP0227_V1.
