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iDRAC - integrated Dell Remote Access Controller

The iDRAC is a device in a Dell server that allows IT administrators to manage and monitor a remote and local server. It doesn't only provide a web UI but also very helpful, handy CLIs.

It also provides SSH public key access, which is wonderful when you manage hundreds of servers by a parallel shell -- such as pdsh.

Install racadm and omreport

# Install
dnf install -y srvadmin-omacore srvadmin-idrac

# Start and enable srvadmin-services
/opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/srvadmin-services.sh start
/opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/srvadmin-services.sh enable

# Check it
/opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/omreport system

Register a SSH public key

racadm -r <ip/hostname> -u <user> -p <password> \
    sshpkauth -i <number> -k <number> -t "$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"
  • -i <number> : User ID. root is 2
  • -k <number> : Key ID. 1 ~ 4
  • -t "text" : content of your public key

You can check a user name by this

racadm get idrac.users.<number>.UserName
  • <number> : Root is 2

Install Dell System Update, update GPG keys, and then run dsu

wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/dsu/bootstrap.cgi | bash
curl -s https://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/dsu/copygpgkeys.sh | bash
yum install dell-system-update
dsu --non-interactive --import-public-key --reboot

Setup a static IP on iDRAC

racadm setniccfg -s <IPv4Address> <netmask> <IPv4 gateway>

Updating iDRAC or BIOS would sometimes fail. If resetting iDRAC doesn't solve the problem, you have to try force-resetting jobqueue and then reset iDRAC like this:

racadm jobqueue delete -i JID_CLEARALL_FORCE
sleep 120 # Wait for two minutes to make sure jobqueue is cleared
racadm racreset
sleep 300 # Wait for five minutes to ensure iDRAC is back to online
# and then
dsu --non-interactive --reboot

Generate the SupportAssist log by CLI

racadm -r <ip/host> -u <user> -p <password> supportassist accepteula
racadm -r <ip/host> -u <user> -p <password> supportassist collect -f <filename>.zip

Set up the next boot with PXE and reboot (locally)

racadm set iDRAC.ServerBoot.BootOnce Enabled
racadm set iDRAC.ServerBoot.FirstBootDevice PXE
reboot

Use serial console via iDRAC

ssh root@<ip/hostname of iDRAC>
racadm>> console com2
  • To exit, Ctrl + \
  • To enable the serial console on CentOS 8, add console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in /etc/sysconfig/grub