Help With iDRAC License Discovery

Question

I manage a large data center and we're finally getting around to getting all of the iDRACs working, should have done it long ago.  My goal is to determine how many licenses I need to purchase (if any) Over the years we have purchased servers with various levels of iDRAC licensing, some with and some without. At the moment none of them are networked so the iDRAC web interface is not available.  All of the servers run CentOS. I know that the Dell support website will report the original configuration that shipped, but I have several hundred servers to discover.  So forget poking around on a website. The racadm command looks promising and can easily be scripted to scan the data center.  The problem is that I don't exactly know what I am looking for. An example follows where I can't determine if or what is licensed: racadm license viewiDRAC.Embedded.1Status = OKDevice = iDRAC.Embedded.1Device Description = iDRAC9Unique Identifier = BC208M2 Does any of this indicate an Express or Enterprise or any kind of licensing at all? Also to complicate matters some of the older systems do not support an iDRAC version that includes the 'racadm license' command.  I could really use a hint for those systems. All of these servers are relatively current in firmware and patches. Any help will be appreciated.

DELL-Joey C · Answer

Hi,

Unfortunately, for older systems, it's hard to accommodate with current way of discovery. That's the reason why the current server evolved from it's predecessors. You may need use the old way of checking out the iDRAC/DRAC/BMC licenses from older units, which is from the support site.

The licenses installed into the server will be displayed in the command racadm license view, if it is not installed, then the server will have basic license/no license installed. Eg: page89 https://dell.to/2xuyoOl

Origin3k · Answer

This is how it looks on an old 12Gen. Server and there is a license description which says "Enterprise".

C:\racadm -r  -u root -p *** license view
Security Alert: Certificate is invalid - Name on Certificate is invalid or does not match site name
Continuing execution. Use -S option for racadm to stop execution on certificate-related errors.
iDRAC.Embedded.1
        Status               = OK
        Device               = iDRAC.Embedded.1
        Device Description   = iDRAC7
        Unique Identifier    = *******
                License #1
                        Status               = OK
                        Transaction ID       = 2
                        License Description  = iDRAC7 Enterprise License
                        License Type         = PERPETUAL
                        Entitlement ID       = ********
                        License Bound        = ********
                        Expiration           = Not Applicable

and its the same for newer iDRAC version as well (13 and 14Gen.)

C:\>racadm -r -u root -p ***** license view | findstr /i License
                License #1
                        License Description  = iDRAC8 Enterprise License
                        License Type         = PERPETUAL
                        License Bound        = *****

C:\>racadm -r 
   -u root -p ***** license view | findstr /i License
                License #1
                        License Description  = iDRAC9 Enterprise License
                        License Type         = PERPETUAL
                        License Bound        = *****

Just some notes... iDRAC speaking ssh and snmp as well and maybe a Snmpwalk can gathering the license for older iDRAC(11Gen Hosts). Otherwise try to set a configuration that only can be only be possible with Enterprise license.

Regards,
Joerg

PowerEdge Hardware General

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