DELL Server DRAC Card Soft Reset With Racadmin

Sometimes a DRAC goes BOINK

Sometimes a DRAC (Dell Remote Access Card) can give you issues. Sometimes it’s some lingering process or another hiccup that causes this. You can try a reboot but that doesn’t always fix the issue. You can go into the BIOS and cancel any running System Services. A “confused” DRAC card can also be fixed by shutting down the server and cutting power for 5 to 10 minutes. That’s good to know as a last resort but not very feasible a lot of times, bar a maintenance window when you’re on premise.

You can also try to do a local or a remote reset of the DRAC card via OpenManage  (OMSA), racadmin. See RACADM Command Line Interface for DRAC for more information on how and when to use this tool. The racadmin can be used for a lot of remote configuration and administration and one of those is a “soft reset” or basically a powercycle, aka reboot, of the drac card itself. Don’t worry your server stays up Smile.

Local: racadmin racreset soft

Remote: racadm -r <ip address> -u <username> -p <password> racreset soft

Real life example

I was doing routine maintenance on 4 Hyper-V clusters and as part of that DUPs (Dell update packages) were being deployed to upgrade some firmware. This can be automated nicely via Cluster Aware Updating and the logging option will help you pin point the issue. See https://blog.workinghardinit.work/2013/01/09/logging-cluster-aware-updating-hotfix-plug-in-installations-to-a-file-share/ for more information on this.

Just like we found that the DRAC upgrade was not succeeding on two nodes.

One it was due to the DUP not being able to access the Virtual USB Device

Software application name: iDRAC6
   Package version: 1.95
   Installed version: 1.92

Executing update…

Device does not impact TPM measurements.

Device: iDRAC6, Application: iDRAC6
  Failed to access Virtual USB Device

==================> Update Result <==================

Update was not applied

================================================

Exit code = 1 (Failure)

and the other was because there was some other lingering DRAC process.

 iDRAC is currently unable to process this request because of another task.
  Please attempt one or more of the following steps to cancel the pending iDRAC task:
  1) Wait 30 minutes and retry your request.
  2) Reboot the system; Press F10; select ‘Exit and Reboot’ from Unified Server Configurator, and retry your request.
  3) Reboot the system; Press Ctrl-E; select ‘System Services’. Then change ‘Cancel System Services’ to YES, which will close the pending task;
      Then press Enter at the warning message. Press ESC twice and select ‘Save Changes and Exit’ and retry your request.

==================> Update Result<==================

Update was not applied

================================================
Exit code = 1 (Failure)

They give some nice suggestions but the racreset is another nice one to have I your toolkit. It’s fast and effective.

Run racadmin racreset soft

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Wait for a couple of minutes and then run the DUP or the items in SUU that failed. With some luck this will succeed now.

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Great Hardware Support Equals Fast Windows 2012 R2 Implementation

I love it when a plan comes together

We adopted Windows 2012 when right after it went RTM in august 2012. Today we’re are already running Windows 2012 R2 and ready to step up the pace. If you are a VAR/ISV that does not have fast & good support for Windows Server 2012 R2 consider this your notice. You can’t lead from behind. Get your act together and take an example from Altaro. Small, sure, but good & fast. How do we get our act together so fast? Fast? Yes, but it does take time and effort.

As it turns out, we’re pretty well of with the DELL hardware stack. The generation 11 and 12 servers are supported by DELL and on the Windows Server Catalog for Windows Server 2012 R2.

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For more information on Dell Server inbox driver support see: Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM Inbox Driver Support on Dell PowerEdge Servers. By the way I can testify that we’ve run Windows Sever 2012 R2 successfully on 9th Generation hardware (PowerEdge 1950/2950).

We’ve been running tests since Windows 2012 R2 Preview on R710/R720 and it has been a blast. We’ve kept them up to date with the latest firmware & drives via SUU. And for our Intel X520 and Mellanox ConnectX-3 we’ve had rapid support as well.

So what more could you want? Well support from your storage array vendor I would think. I’m happy to report that Storage Center 6.4 has been out since October 8th and it supports Windows Server 2012 R2. Dell Compellent Adds MLC SSD Tier – Bests 15K HDDs on Price and Performance. Mind you on a lazy Sunday afternoon 2 quick e-mails to CoPilot got me the answer that Storage Center 6.3.10 also supports Windows Server 2012 R2.  Sweet!

And that’s not just DELL, the Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.4 is fully Windows Server 2012 R2 logo certified! That’s what you want to see from you vendor. Fast & excellent support.

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Here’s the entire DELL hardware line up with Windows Server 2012 R2 support. Happy upgrading & implementation! If you have Software Assurance you’re set to reap the benefits of that investment today!

To my all employers / clients, you see now, told you so. Now, I have a thing in common with Col. Hannibal Smith, I love it when a plan comes together Open-mouthed smile.

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I know some of you think that all the testing, breaking, wrecking of Preview bits, RTM & GA versions we do looks like chaos. Especially when you visually add the test server & switch configurations. But that’s what it looks like to YOU. To the initiated this is well executed plan, dropping all assumptions, to establish what works & will hold up. The result is that we’re ready today and by extension, so are you.