DRAC access over the Internet

Question

Hi, our firewall runs on a Dell with a DRAC. We want to be able to power up the firewall if it ever goes down. If the firewall is down we will not be able to access the DRAC so we were thinking of attaching the DRAC port directly to the Internet. Is this safe? how secure is the DRAC interface? Thanks.

Mark_A_Smith · Answer

Since the DRAC is a hardware based http server it is not possible to hack or infect the interface. I would suggest that you change the default user account and password.

I still would not suggest doing this in a normal situation. The only security on the drac is the user/password. If someone were to get this information they would have full control of the server over the internet.

A better solution would be to create a VPN and then access your internal network via the VPN.

Ozzie1799 · Answer

Thanks for the reply. That is how we have been running it up to now over a VPN but once the firewall is powered off then the VPN link no longer exists and we cannot get to it to power it back up, hence going over the Internet. Our ISP has put an access list on the port to allow only connections from 1 particular ip address (I know this is spoofable but a hacker would need to know what to spoof) and we will, of course, change the login credentials. I think we are being as secure as we can be but any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

DPYeilding · Answer

Here are the instructions for changing the DRAC root password. On your Windows XP notebook or desktop that has the ability to access the DRAC's you need to download and install the RAC console from the IT Assistant software.

Download: http://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/MgmtStat-WIN-4.5_A00.exe

Extract the file and double-click on the setup.exe file in the windows directory. It will perform a pre-requisite check. Some items may fail the check, just ignore and choose to continue. Choose a customer installation and select the RAC Management Station. Make sure all other items are de-selectd and choose next. After the installation is complete you can bring up a command prompt from your XP notebook and use the RACADM command to change the passwords.

Here is an example of the syntax you will type. My RAC IP Address is 192.168.1.1, my username is root and my password is calvin. I am changing my password to password.

C:\>racadm -u root -p calvin -r 192.168.1.1 config -g cfgUserAdmin -o cfgUserAdminPassword -i 1 password

PowerEdge Hardware General

DRAC access over the Internet

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