Monitoring Older PowerEdge's

Question

We have a server farm consisting of about 200 Dell servers. 25% of them date back to 6350's, 4350's, etc. Not all of them have openmanage installed but most do. The problems I am finding however are that the servers that do have openmange installed are versions newer then what is actually listed under the available version to download when selecting the Systems Management section for the respective server under downloads and drivers. I do not have access to the original installation source for these versions and most I try to download claim it is older then the version installed. I am simply trying to find a version that is the newest most compatible across these older servers.

Secondly, I am running the newest version of IT Manager and a number of these older servers are showing with Question Marks. When viewing the details, it only lists Windows Management Instrumentation with a green check (for those windows 2003 servers). So I take it these older PowerEdge servers can not be properly monitored using the newest Management Station?

Anybody able to provide some insight here or confirmation on what I posted above?

Thanks

Clay2k · Answer

My poweredge 4400 is running server agents only, it seems to be v3.2

my services have three dell items which point to files with 32 in their file name hence the version assumption, also they are in a path like dell/HIP/etc... so maybe the word HIP will help your search.

anway the services:
Dell Open Manage Server Agent
Dell Open Manage Server Agent DMI
Dell Open Manage Server Event Monitor

so i have only the agents installed along with the array manager (newer systems use server administrator / storage management) and i can see it fine in my IT Assistant which is version 8.0.0.15. I am able to also right click on the server and load DRACII web console, Array manager (i believe i also had to install array manager locally on my XP system so that it would actually work remotely but i could be wrong). I also have another 4400 with a green check mark next to it, yet it is sitting in the "unknown" category and plenty of servers that are unknown. I just haven't taken the time to resolve those issues.

I would be lying to you if i said it was easy to setup though, i recall it was a pain in the rear, especially because they are discontinued/old so support is very limited, documentation was not always enough but you can do it for sure. My 4400 is the next generation then yours so you may need older versions, but i believe all you need is the agents, array manager and time. good luck.

maybe i posted solutions when i had trouble before... check my post history.

Canada101 · Answer

Thanks for the information. I guess half the problem at this point is that Im not sure where to get the agents for these older servers. If I download what is available under the drivers/management software for the respective model i get an error during install on most of them saying a newer version is installed. I havent been able to find this newer version, because the newest oldest version i can find states the server/s are not supported. So its kind of a trial and error thing which im not having much success at.

i will see if i can find some of your old posts and if thats a help.

Clay2k · Answer

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/OM_3.2.0_DSA_A00.ISO

follow their FTP links, their FTP is a huge archive, but they do need to clean up the file names, it is a bit difficult to get everything you need and will take you time. This hopefully will get you started, might be all you need.

Canada101 · Answer

Thanks for the link. I will see what I can dig up.

Systems Management General

Monitoring Older PowerEdge's

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