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No connection through iDRAC
I inherited a Poweredge R420, and the person before me never set up the iDRAC. I'm trying to do so, having done so previously on other Poweredges, though it's been a few years. But I'm having no luck and I'm not sure what's going wrong. I've gone into the iDRAC settings at boot and set the IP address, gateway, etc.... and triple checked all of the info. But I cannot ping it at all. The switch it's connected to shows the port as being down (and the same when I tried a known working port and a known working cable, to be sure), and there's no light. Is the iDRAC port physically just dead, or is there some way it might be disabled or something else reversible that would present like this? Note: the server itself and the main networking ports are working fine; it's just the iDRAC port doing this.
Thank you!
DELL-Daniel My
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July 20th, 2017 18:00
Hello
What is the networking mode set to in the iDRAC? Is it set to shared or dedicated? What license do you have installed? The system needs an iDRAC enterprise license, the optional iDRAC port card, and be set to dedicated mode to use the iDRAC port.
Thanks
cawst
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July 20th, 2017 20:00
It needs an enterprise license? I thought there were Basic and/or Express licenses?
I can guarantee we won't have purchased an enterprise license, since we're a charity, but I thought we'd still be able to do some very basic stuff with it...
The port is there, and set to dedicated.
cawst
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July 21st, 2017 10:00
Also - I can't get into the iDRAC BIOS menu right now, as it's really hard to take this server down outside of a scheduled maintenance window, but....I definitely remember seeing a lot of areas greyed out with it saying we were licensed for them. So maybe the license somehow isn't properly applied?
DELL-Daniel My
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July 21st, 2017 10:00
Yes
There is a chart on page 20 of the iDRAC User's Guide that lists what features are available based on licensing. Even if the optional dedicated port is installed it cannot be used without an enterprise license on an iDRAC7.
www.dell.com/support/home/product-support/product/poweredge-r420/manuals
Thanks
cawst
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July 21st, 2017 10:00
Oh....rather astonishingly, I was just able to track down the original order and the enterprise license was in fact purchased. Huh! :-)
So, given that - is there something else I would need to do to enable this license/feature?
Thanks! Sorry for the confusion.
DELL-Daniel My
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July 21st, 2017 15:00
If you have OpenManage Server Administrator installed or you can access the iDRAC web interface you can check the installed license from either of those applications.
cawst
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July 21st, 2017 15:00
I don't have OpenManage, no. Is there some way I'd be able to get to the iDRAC web interface when it's not responding on that port?
DELL-Daniel My
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July 21st, 2017 17:00
Not unless you have already configured it to use the shared LOM or have a way to change the configuration to use the shared LOM.
cawst
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July 21st, 2017 17:00
Not without taking it down, at least to my knowledge. So I guess I'm stuck until I can schedule another maintenance window. :-( Ah well. Thanks.