I suspect that the total power outage was a mistake. The DRAC is capable of updating and rebooting itself without that being necessary. If the DRAC was in the process of reprogramming its flash when the power was ripped out from under it, it might have been left unbootable.

I'm not aware of any sort of flash recovery process for a DRAC 5. That being the case, I suspect that this it is time for a service call if you have a warranty, otherwise replace the DRAC if you haven't.

Wow, a DRAC firmware failure, what a surprise.

I'd say your at the point where it may need to be replaced.

Hi,

I have a similar problem with a PowerEdge 1950:

# racadm racreset ERROR: A firmware update is currently in progress. Unable to reset the RAC at this time.

Is there any other way to force a reset of the DRAC?

Thanks.

Hi, I have a similar problem with a PowerEdge 1950:   # racadm racreset ERROR: A firmware update is currently in progress. Unable to reset the RAC at this time. Is there any other way to force a reset of the DRAC? Thanks.

I'm seeing this on an R710.  The iDRAC is completely unresponsive.  There's also another message stating that racadm couldn't talk to the BMC.

When an iDRAC is not responsive after a firmware upgrade attempt, the only potential fix I have found is to power off the server and unplug the power cords to it for 10 seconds. Remember that the DRAC is always on if the server has power, whether the server is shutdown or not.

Before running a firmware upgrade run the racadm vmdisconnect command, to make sure you have no virtual media connected. Connected virutal media will hose your firmware upgrade.

You can SSH into into an iDRAC Enterprise and run the racadm vmdisconnect command. For that reason we specify Enterprise DRACs for our VMware servers.

The iDRAC GUI has a reset option under iDRAC Settings and Troubleshooting tab.

Reset from putty/SSH won't work but this option does.