OMSA Managing Node on Linux

Hi,

If you install the Linux version of OMSA it will include the web server portion and then you can use it to access the ESXi host. 

Open https://
 
  :1311/OMSALogin?manageDWS=false
 

     -> Enter ESXi host mgmt IP Address

Ubuntu should work with this version, but the validated OSes are only RHEL and Suse. http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/ubuntu/

ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/Common/dell-opnmang-sw-v7.4_User%27s%20Guide2_en-us.pdf

Thanks for your reply.

My fear was that if the O/S is not supported, some hardware components in remote node might not be checked and displayed at all while we're not informed.

OK, maybe Ubuntu is a bit too far-fetched.  Moreover, I've found the so-called "Systems Software Support Matrix" at 

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

And when I clicked on Ubuntu's PDF file, nothing can be downloaded. Well LOL

Let's say in Red Hat/Suse.  I know officially Enterprise editions are supported. But what about non-Enterprise edition?

Thanks for the PDF file.

Non enterprise versions are not validated either. You can use CentOS or OpenSuse, while they are not officially supported they use the same code as Red Hat or Suse and you can trick Openmanage into thinking they are the real versions.

I have just tried CentOS 6.6 minimal.  But it's not working .... :(

Actually, after uncompressing the tar.gz, I tried to run "setup.sh" but I got the error message beginning with the sentence:

Unrecognized Operating System or Architecture

And the shell script just quit.

I tried to find out what RPM to manually install, but that turned to be quite confusing.  If my understanding is correct, the component that I need to remotely manage ESXi hosts is only Server Administrator Web Server.  Am I correct?  Or do I still need to install Remote Enablement?  Because it happened to me to change RAID disk configuration.  And in order to do so, I need Remote Enablement?

Anyway, suppose I just need Server Administrator Web Server, I'm still not sure of the list of RPM to install and the order.  Is the list at page 22 inside the PDF file (the installation guide that you suggested me) THE list I need?  What am I supposed to do with the service name?  What order to install?  Or I just put all the RPM's in one single command?

Thanks in advance

You only need Server Administrator Web Server on the Linux machine. The easiest way to install OMSA is with yum.

http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/omsa.html

1. Set up the Dell OpenManage      Repository at http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware, like this:

wget -q -O - linux.dell.com/.../bootstrap.cgi | bash

yum install srvadmin-webserver

I finally got some spare time and went on trying installing OMSA 7.4 in CentOS 6.6 and at last managed to install it! ... but .... (yeah, there are a lot of "but")

About installing OMSA....

When I hit the obstacle of "Unrecognized Operating System or Architecture", I tried the trick to edit "/etc/redhat-release" file to make setup script believe that it's inside RHEL, but this trick didn't bring me very far.

So I finally used the suggested "wget -q -O ......." command.  It's really a shame.  I would have liked to install with offline package.

Once the packages are installed, we actually also need to run the command

/opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/srvadmin-services.sh start

I didn't know this and got stuck while thinking I might have wrongly installed the packages.  Luckily I found the answer in other forum.

Then comes the part of testing...

In my previous posts, I actually tried on CentOS 6.6 minimal edition but this turned out to be a bad idea because without GUI, I was not able to open a browser in local computer.  Once I installed CentOS 6.6 normal edition (in "Desktop" type), that helped me figure out that there's actually a firewall installed by default!

It was quite a pain to edit the iptables config file so I finally totally turn iptables off!

So finally I've got the webpage to let me inspect ESXi hosts.  But I've found two problems here:

1. In some known situation, I kept on getting "Login failed... connection error" but I was 100% sure of the username and password.  I finally rebooted the CentOS "managing node" server and the problem went away!  This is very annoying.  I do not want to reboot managing node server all the time.  I don't have this problem in Windows server.

2. Once logged in, every page is loaded VERY slowly.  It seems like something is going slowly between ESXi hosts and the CentOS server.  I'm 100% that problem is in the CentOS server because I still have Windows server as managing node in the network.  When I use this Windows server, I don't have this lagging issue.

And lastly and personally, I'm quite disappointed with CentOS server.  My Windows server (inside a VM), which is working fine, only needs 768 MB.  But for CentOS, I have to give it 1 GB and it's still lagging slowly.

About the Unrecognized Operating System or Architecture problem I encountered earlier, I think it's an unfortunate separate problem in the package which prevents it from being installed RHEL 6.6 (ie CentOS 6.6).

I have sent the bug report here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/177/t/19632731