Does OME really work??

Hi erlang and thanks for the post.

We're proud that we've had a very active support forum for OpenManage Essentials.  We answer all questions promptly and, when appropriate, will refer the poster to Dell Support so that they can collect more detailed information to help find a resolution.

Remember that as a support forum, the vast number of people posting here will be trying to resolve questions or issues.  If you dig, you can see that lots of them are brought to resolution.   I'm not sure how many people will be taking the time to post unsolicited praise of the product---though I welcome it :-).

You say that you came to the forum for answers.  Is there a question you have that I can help try to answer?

We welcome feedback, product feature requests, and troubleshooting in this forum.

I'm sorry you are disappointed, but if you can be more specific as to your trouble, I'd love the opportunity to try and help you.

OpenManage Essentials provides for discovery, inventory, health monitoring of Dell devices as well as patching of servers.  There are a number of videos and whitepapers on www.delltechcenter.com/ome that can provide some overview of the features.  But as I said, I am glad to assist in questions you may have on the product.

If you have specific details you can give us on your update trouble let us know.

Regards,

Rob

well i i download the evaluation a couple of hours ago , and im testing it on a one server a poweredge 310 , it did find the server , and im trying to update it , it found a couple of firmware to update for nics , so i applied the updates " task was created and for the last hour it is still pending not doing anything" the weird thing is i saw it connecting through port 22 over SSH? a windows 2003 R2 box , any clues?

domain administrator , and i read section 6 , i tried a couple of things but still didnt work , i think i have to take a look at it again , i remember seeing something about setting IE security settings to low

Hi erlang.

if you like, PM me your case number from the support tech and I will also take a look at it.

For the 2,000 devices that you have discovered, are they being classified under Servers or Unknown?

Do these devices have OMSA installed?

What version of OME do you have (See about box)?

What protocol are you using to discover?  (SNMP, WMI, etc.)

For Linux servers, you will need to discover the server via SNMP and it needs to have OMSA installed.

What are the dependent pieces that you are concerned with?  (OMSA? or something else?)

You say that there is no useful information.  What information would you like to see?   Currently you should see the following for a server:

-Rollup health status,

-deep hardware inventory (CPU, mem, NIC, etc.),

- software update compliance (new BIOS, etc.)

-as well as any SNMP alerts that have come in on the managed node.

We are eager to find out what other data you might find helpful and consider it for a future release.

I'm sincerely interested in seeing if I can provide some help.  Let me know if you are interested.

Rob

Thanks for the post.

Port 22 is used only if you are patching a Linux server.  In the next release, we'll be hiding that port info unless it's patching a Linux box.

What kind of permissions do your credentials have on the box you are targetting?  Also the FAQ (Section 6) has some common issues for system update that may want to review.

Thanks,

Rob

en.community.dell.com/.../3265.openmanage-essentials-faq.aspx

currently getting a login error referencing a drive and path that do not exist:

The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to

  at Helpers.Extensions.Impersonator..ctor(SystemAccount systemAccount, String domain, String userName, String password) in d:\jenkins\jobs\OME_1.0 Build\workspace\bandera_front_end\common\~Helpers\Impersonator.cs:line 134

  at Helpers.Extensions.Impersonator..ctor(String domainName, String userName, String password) in d:\jenkins\jobs\OME_1.0 Build\workspace\bandera_front_end\common\~Helpers\Impersonator.cs:line 55

  at DataProvider.Security.Database.OpenSqlConnection(String initialDatabaseName) in d:\jenkins\jobs\OME_1.0 Build\workspace\bandera_front_end\process_logic\DataProvider\Database.cs:line 266

  at DataProvider.Security.SecureDataContext.GetSettingsByType(SettingType settingType) in d:\jenkins\jobs\OME_1.0 Build\workspace\bandera_front_end\process_logic\DataProvider.Security\SecureDataContext+.cs:line 155

  at SmartConsole.Service.DataService.GetSettingsByType(SettingType settingType) in d:\jenkins\jobs\OME_1.0 Build\workspace\bandera_front_end\ui\SmartConsole\SmartConsole.Service\DataService+(Settings).cs:line 35

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Local Stack Trace:

SmartConsole.ErrorHandler >> Show

SmartConsole.DataCache >> LoadCheck

SmartConsole.DataCache >> LoadGlobalSettings

SmartConsole.DataCache >> b__5a

SmartConsole.DataServiceReference.DataServiceClient >> OnGetSettingsByTypeCompleted

System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback >> WaitCallback_Context

System.Threading.ExecutionContext >> Run

System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback >> System.Threading.IThreadPoolWorkItem.ExecuteWorkItem

System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue >> Dispatch

System.Threading._ThreadPoolWaitCallback >> PerformWaitCallback

Can you confirm the credentials you are using to update the managed node are valid and have the appropriate permissions to run the update?  

The error log mentions the account may be locked out.  Are you able to use these credentials to successfully log into this target?

The path info is just developer logs.  I'll send a note to clean-up/hide those going forward.  You can safely ignore.

Thanks,

Rob

OME is locking out my domain admin account in a matter of seconds.

This was installed with Dell rep on site.  Now a password change on my part has broken it and locked me out from doing my job.

I had to shut down the server.  I think its an omen....

Yeah, so you can change the password.

I'm guessing you used your Domain account to set up OME. Then you also used that to connect to SQL.  Now that p/w is cached in OME until you change it.

If you change it externally, when you log onto OME it will detect it and give you an option to change the password.

Did you do this yet?

Support can also walk you through this process if you like (800-945-3355)

Rob

Dell s/ware updates have been very disappointing in trying to execute them. Doing updates is quite a chore, but search for "The easiest way to update a Dell Server's Firmware" by Bob Plankers and you will get a method that at least works.

Cheers,

JB

Well, you got me there..

We have just over a thousand servers, about 600 virtuals and I have to say, I stuck with ITA because after our last patch window, the report that OME gave me was vastly different from ITA.

Also, even tho the server may have omsa on it, it shows up as unknown and doesn't get inventoried.  Would be nice to cut out the virtuals all together, but what can ya do?

Grouping works the same way ITA does, there are a little changes.  

Updates are horrendous since we don't want to update EVERY little thing.  Filtering them out of the actual repository doesn't work, still tags all updates.  When you do update a server, that works rather well.  It is faster than ITA when doing updates, but when you doubt any update, you can't rely on it, and that just won't do in our organization.  

Does OME work?  Yeah, if you have 100 servers.  Can it be better?  You bet!  Reporting is fairly limited to standard items and you can't create custom reports.

Do I use it?  About once a month, and that is to just check to see if it is still running.  I use ITA on a daily basis because it works.  It is slower than molasses, but I can trust it.

Usability - 8

Worthwhile usability 6

Trust - 2

Hope this helps.  :)

@Aethies, btw, you say you have a server with OMSA on it and it does not get inventoried?

Let's dig into that.

See #6 of my list below.  When you run the Dell TS tool for an SNMP test, what version of OMSA is displayed in the result set?

Here are the important items to check when you are chasing down OME Discovery and Inventory issues.

1. Check FAQ 3.6 if inventory is not showing up.
2. Be sure OMSA is on the managed node (target)  if you are using SNMP/WMI (#3.3)
3. Be sure you have “accept packets” checked on your managed node (#3.4)
4. If discovering a 2008 server, see item #3.5
5. Be sure you check the community string, remember they are *case sensitive* (#3.4).  Did you type it in correctly in the discovery wizard?  Did you type it in correctly in the managed node SNMP properties?  Did you type it in correctly in the TS test screen?
6. Run the SNMP troubleshooting test for SNMP or WMI.  For SNMP the results *must* include the version of OMSA in the table.  For WMI the results *must* contain the words “Dell Server Agent” for the namespace returned.

Thanks for the post Aethies.  I think you had few posts a month or so ago on your initial experience.  I'm glad your back to post additional feedback.

We are actually adding better group control over how you target your patches in the next release.  As you said, we've made parts faster than ITA and the catalog import is much quicker.  The mechanism for pushing out the patches is pretty similar to ITA.  And we're looking at how we can take that to the next level as well.

We've gotten feedback that some folks would like the ability to create reports.  We've sent that along to the marketing team and this is under serious consideration as well.  I'd also like feedback on any additional pre-canned reports you may like to see.  Let me know.

Let's look to improve the trust issue that you point out as a concern.  When you say it updates any little thing, how does this compare with ITA?  Are you looking to update based on groups (as I mentioned we are looking to add this).  Or some other fine-grained control?  I'm interested in your feedback around this.

Of course, ITA 8.9.1 represents ten years of evolution and folks really like it.  (which is great since I was on that dev team :-).  We are interested in listening to customer feedback on this 1.0 product and doing our best to include all the features and behaviors that provide the greatest benefit.

thanks for taking the time to post your feedback,

Rob

This is where it gets AWESOME... So the troubleshooting tool fails on SNMP... but ITA's tool is successful... so riddle me that.. :)