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tnn

30 Posts

29400

August 26th, 2007 17:00

Serial Console over LAN - BMC and DRAC.

Hi all,
 
For a little over three years, my DRACIII/XT cards have become unreachable. Both are loaded on PE 750's and have been replaced by Dell. Now they are out of war and I can't get to the servers to pull the cord at 03:00 AM each Sunday morning. Enough sour grapes.
 
Here is a list of my hardware:
 
PE 500 vinstage 2002 (secondary nameserver only)
PE SC1400 vintage 2002 (RAID 5 Backups server and Primary nameserver)
PE SC1400 vintage 2003 (Spare Server)
2 x PE 750 vintage 2004 (with DRAC III/XT) (both production webservers)
PE 1850 vintage 2005 (with drac 4/I) Dedicated client webserver, managed by us)
PE 860 vintage 2007 (with DRAC 4/P) (production webserver).
 
All running FreeBSD 6.2 with ipmitool installed.
 
What I am looking to do is stop relying on the DRACs as they have been less than reliable.because I am using FreeBSD, I can't get any real help from Dell.
 
I have been reading a quite abit about BMC, and IPMI tool and console redirecting using the BMC to set it up.
 
Now, I have two nics on each card. 1 nic on each is setup as WAN (Internet) and the other as LAN. Since I am 200 miles from my servers, can I setup the BMC console redirect (SOL) using the same physical NIC as the OS uses to serve webpages? Or does it require a dedicated NIC? I also need to know that when the OS is up and running (150 IPs and all) on the primary nic, with the console redirect still work on the primary nic?
 
As you can imagine, I dont reboot these servers too often, so I am assuming the PE 500 and the PE SC1400's do NOT have SOL (BMC) capability. Does anyone know for sure?
 
Also, If I manage to get console redirect working over Ethernet, will I still be able to use the console localy? Will ssh still be able to connect to a console? Will the DRACs still be able to connect over the console?
 
All Feeedback is welcomed.
 
-Grant
 

DELL-Jeff M

2 Intern

 • 

793 Posts

August 27th, 2007 22:00

Thanks for posting!  First, you would have to remove the DRAC card from any system in which you want to use the BMC.  The BMC is able to shut down or restart a server if IPMI will let it, pull the Embedded Server Management Logs, and do a text-only console redirect through the same NIC that the system uses for other purposes.  However, the NIC and SOL Proxy connection is very delicate, and connecting via WAN is not likely to work.  If you get the BMC working, any OS-based console should still work, and actually that is the preferred method of accessing the server under the circumstances you describe.
 
I also recommend getting a 3rd party VT100/ANSI terminal emulator to use instead of HyperTerminal.
 
The 750's do not have a BMC you can use over the LAN, I know the 1850 does, and so does the 860.

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