The iDRAC manual has a section on managing vFlash, it starts on page 236 of the 2.70 manual. Aside from all of the recommendations in the manual, make sure the system is not in booted into the setup menu. The iDRAC/LCC may have reduced functionality until the system completes boot.

http://www.dell.com/idracmanuals/

Good Morning @DELL-Daniel My and thanks for taking the time to reply.

Yes, the 'Managing vFlash SD card' section starts on page 236 of the 'Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 8 Version 2.70.70.70 User’s Guide' and there's some additional relevant information in the 'iDRAC 8/7 v2.70.70.70 RACADM CLI Guide' document.

Unless I'm missing something, it looks like all the prerequisites and dependencies have been met:

• vflashsd status shows the last action was to initialize the SD card, that progress is at 100% and the status is complete
• iDRAC.vflashsd.Initialized shows initialized
• iDRAC.vflashsd.Health shows OK
• iDRAC.vflashsd.AvailableSize and iDRAC.vflashsd.Size both confirm plenty of space
• iDRAC.vflashsd.Enable shows enabled
• iDRAC.vflashsd.Licensed shows licensed
• iDRAC.vflashsd.WriteProtect shows disabled

Having said all that:

1. Does everything appear to be in order?
2. Did I miss checking something? 

Like I mentioned in my original post, the vflash commands are being accepted, there are no errors thrown, but it also doesn't appear to be doing anything.  I'm not seeing any relevant log entries under

• Overview > Server > Logs
• Overview > Server > Job Queue

So I have to ask:

1. Are these types of actions (e.g.: create partition; create partition from image etc.) and their results logged anywhere?
2. Do I need to increase log verbosity to get that information?  If so, how & where?

 

Now, you mentioned something that gave me thought:

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@DELL-Daniel My wrote:

...make sure the system is not in booted into the setup menu. The iDRAC/LCC may have reduced functionality until the system completes boot.

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This is particularly interesting:

1. Would you mind pointing me to where this is documented so I can better understand the limitations and ideal conditions for accessing & manipulating iDRAC/LCC?
2. What constitutes a complete boot?

I am performing the vflash operations with the asset powered off primarily because there is no OS currently installed.  I could turn it on, but I'm not confident that is going to help, especially considering it wouldn't boot into a full OS.  But let me ask you:

1. Would booting an OS from a USB thumb drive or virtual media count has 'completing boot'?

Thanks again

What Dan was trying to say is that if you open a configuration utility in one location, say you are locally in the system setup utility, you may see reduced functionality if you also try to access it through the iDRAC's web GUI (save for the virtual console, since you would in effect be looking in the same space).

As for completing boot, that would have meant that completing POST, since the iDRAC can function at full capacity without an OS to boot. Just a miscommunication, I'm sure. For clarity, when I say "completing POST," I mean that the system didn't halt for any errors and the system is not in the system setup or any other system utlity. 

In my experience, whether using racadm or the iDRAC web interface, it's hit-or-miss when creating vFlash partitions from an image on my R710 iDRAC6. Eventually it works, though.

Unfortunately, there's no indication as to why it fails when it does. In many cases the web interface indicates the upload was successful, but when I click the 'Go back' button, the partition list is empty.

In once case, I was using racadm to view the status and it said the partition existed, and was unattached and read-only. But when I went to the vFlash Manage tab, the partition list was empty. After that, racadm said there were no partitions defined.