Well, I don't know the answer to your question about that pattern, but I can say that the earliest DRAC I know of would be the DRAC5 for 9G. The tenth gen also used DRAC5. I checked both the R900 and R300 documentation and the DRAC5 was implemented on the high end and mid-grade models. The 9th and 10th gen servers are the only ones I know of that had DRAC generational crossover.
If a DRAC4 does exist, I've never seen it (it could exist under another name, but I don't want to put my foot in my mouth). I'd think you could use DRAC5 as a backstop.
The pattern does seem to hold and I wouldn't expect that to change now, but I'm not in a position to comment on if they would take a new approach with, say 15G, for sake of argument. I can say that from a support angle, when people tell me they need help with DRACX, in my head, I immediately translate to Server gen Y, and it hasn't been inaccurate so far.
Unfortunately, the only resource I'd be able to reference is the manual, but the CLI guide for the latest iDRAC9 firmware for the 14G system doesn't list a value readout similar to what you're looking for.
I needed to know the drac version to understand if I can monitor the hardware via SNMP. This is supported after drac version 7. I can get the drac version via omreport as well, but again, for generation 9 and 10 servers this doesn't work either.
I'm noticing that the drac version is 5 behind the generation number. For example:
Gen 14: drac 9
Gen 13: drac 8
..
Gen 11: drac 6
For Gen 9 and 10, the number would be 4 and 5 but I don't think there's idrac version 4 and 5? Regardless, As long as I can determine if the drac version is 7 or not is sufficient kind of.
I think we're missing each other because I used a double negative, but I'll just rephrase so the thread doesn't look weird.
The only case of cross generational DRAC use (to the best of my knowledge) is DRAC5, and has been accurate for me in the way that I've needed to use it.
As opposed to noticing the N-5 sort of relationship, it was just in my head as DracX corresponds to server gen Y. It was a collection of little knowledge grains, and the expectation of following a +1 pattern, as opposed to noticing the relationship in the way you've described it. Just a different way of thinking about it, one not any more or less accurate than the other.
I'll admit that it really makes me curious about what DRAC1-4 would have been, but that's because I'm curious about basically everything.
As for tricks, there's nothing I can really point to because so much of what I know is going to be very specific to circumstance. I'm happy to be an open book, but I'm really drawing a bank right now, haha.
Dell-DylanJ
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Posted March 25th, 2020 13:00
Well, I don't know the answer to your question about that pattern, but I can say that the earliest DRAC I know of would be the DRAC5 for 9G. The tenth gen also used DRAC5. I checked both the R900 and R300 documentation and the DRAC5 was implemented on the high end and mid-grade models. The 9th and 10th gen servers are the only ones I know of that had DRAC generational crossover.
If a DRAC4 does exist, I've never seen it (it could exist under another name, but I don't want to put my foot in my mouth). I'd think you could use DRAC5 as a backstop.
The pattern does seem to hold and I wouldn't expect that to change now, but I'm not in a position to comment on if they would take a new approach with, say 15G, for sake of argument. I can say that from a support angle, when people tell me they need help with DRACX, in my head, I immediately translate to Server gen Y, and it hasn't been inaccurate so far.