Skip to main content
  • Place orders quickly and easily
  • View orders and track your shipping status
  • Enjoy members-only rewards and discounts
  • Create and access a list of your products
  • Manage your Dell EMC sites, products, and product-level contacts using Company Administration.

Dell EMC OpenManage Essentials Version 2.5 User's Guide

Collecting Firmware and Driver Inventory

The Create F/W & Driver Inventory Task allows you to collect firmware and driver inventory information from a server. The collected inventory information serves as a baseline that is used by OpenManage Essentials to identify and apply updates on the server. This task allows you to collect firmware and driver inventory information that is otherwise not be available to OpenManage Essentials in the following scenarios:
  • Servers discovered using WMI or SSH protocol that do not have OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) installed.

  • PowerEdge servers or OEM servers that do not have OMSA installed.

  • Servers running Linux that have OMSA installed, but the inventory collector component is uninstalled.

After the inventory information is collected, you can update the firmware, BIOS, or drivers of the server through the System Update portal.
  • NOTE: The Create F/W & Driver Inventory Task utilizes the inventory collector component to collect firmware and driver inventory from target servers. The inventory collector component is deployed on each target server for collecting the inventory information. After the task is completed, the inventory collector component is automatically removed.

To collect firmware and driver inventory:

  1. Perform one of the following:
    • Click Manage > Remote Tasks > Create F/W & Driver Inventory Task .
    • If the server was discovered using WMI/SSH protocol and OMSA is not installed, click Manage > System Update > Non-Inventoried Systems .
      1. Select the systems you want to inventory and click Inventory.
      2. In the Systems to Inventory window, click Run Inventory.
    The Create a Firmware & Driver Inventory Task window is displayed.
  2. On General, provide a name for the task.
  3. If you want to filter the devices to be displayed in the Task Target based on the operating system, select Filter devices based on Operating System.
    1. Select Windows or Linux.
    2. If applicable, select 64-bit System .
      • NOTE: By default, target devices that have OMSA installed are not displayed on the Task Targets tab.
    3. Select Show OMSA based targets to also view target devices that have OMSA installed in the Task Target tab.
    4. If you selected Show OMSA based targets , perform one of the following in the Future Software Inventory Data Collected by section:
      • NOTE: The Future Software Inventory Data Collected by options only determine the method OpenManage Essentials utilizes to gather firmware and driver inventory information from target devices after an in-band system update. If the F/W and Driver task based inventory option is selected, scheduled discovery and inventory cycles will still gather the OMSA-based inventory from target devices, except the information in the Software Inventory table.
      • OMSA based inventory — Select to revert to gathering firmware and driver inventory information through OMSA on target devices that have OMSA installed.
        • NOTE: To revert to gathering firmware and driver inventory information through OMSA, you must either run the firmware and driver inventory task or delete and rediscover the device.
      • F/W and Driver task based inventory — Select to gather firmware and driver inventory information through the inventory collector component, even though OMSA may be installed on the device.
  4. On Task Target, do one of the following:
    • Select a query from the drop-down list or click New to create a new query.
    • Select servers on which you want to run this task and click Next.
  5. On Schedule and Credentials, set the schedule parameters, provide user credentials to enable the task.
  6. Click Finish. The status of the inventory collection is displayed in the Task Execution History of the Remote Tasks portal.

Rate this content

Accurate
Useful
Easy to understand
Was this article helpful?
0/3000 characters
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please select whether the article was helpful or not.
  Comments cannot contain these special characters: <>()\