iDRAC is Dell’s remote management device.

• iDRAC6 manual
• it’s supposed to support normal IPMI stuff, but that seems to suck
• it’s got a web interface, we have aliases in dotfiles to setup tunnels to it, ie “warblerhttps”
• you can ssh to it, fingerprints in the normal place

  • ssh ADMIN@warbler-mp

  • get console

    console com2

    escape sequence is ctrl-\ . NOTE: you can’t use the iDRAC serial and physical serial at the same time, see below.
  • power commands
    

    racadm serveraction powerstatus
    racadm serveraction powerdown
    racadm serveraction powerup
    racadm serveraction hardreset
    racadm serveraction powercycle
    

• The system also has a physical serial port and if it’s set to be com2 like the iDRAC’s RAC Serial port, you can use it as well, but you can’t use both at once and if you connect to the RAC one the physical serial stops working.
• Because the iDRAC uses a shared port with the system eth0, if something triggers a DHCP on eth0 then your connection to the iDRAC will hang. For this reason it’s better to use the physical serial port.
• The DB9 connector on the back of the system is slightly recessed, so most DB9-to-rj45 adapters have problems plugging in reliably. Make sure it’s connected all the way or you will have problems.
• Setting the external serial port to “Remote management device” in the BIOS enables an iDRAC login/passwd prompt, this is intended for if you were dialing in with a modem of some sort. Since our serial terminal server already has credentials we don’t use that.