Lifecycle Controller User's Guide

Introduction

Dell Lifecycle Controller provides advanced embedded systems management to perform systems management tasks such as deploy, configure, update, maintain, and diagnose using a graphical user interface (GUI). It is delivered as part of integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) out-of-band solution and embedded Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) applications in the latest Dell servers. iDRAC works with the UEFI firmware to access and manage every aspect of the hardware, including component and subsystem management that is beyond the traditional Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) capabilities.

Lifecycle Controller has the following components:

• GUI:
  • Is an embedded configuration utility that resides on an embedded flash memory card.
  • Is similar to the BIOS utility that is started during the boot sequence, and can function in a pre-operating system environment.
  • Enables server and storage management tasks from an embedded environment throughout the life cycle of the server.
• Remote Services (WS-Man and iDRAC RESTful API with Redfish) simplify end-to-end server life cycle management by using the one-to-many method. It can be accessed over the network by using the secure web services interfaces and can be used by applications and scripts. Also, it provides a single view of all the system settings that can be imported and exported from the server to perform one-to-many cloning operations. For more information about remote services features, see Lifecycle Controller Remote Services Quick Start Guide available on the iDRAC manuals page..