Dell OpenManage

[jarends3]

Is anyone running the Dell OpenManage products on their ESX hosts? What benefits does it get you? Any tricks? Anything not work as expected?

[admin]

We are monitoring our ESX host with Dell OpenManage but we use an agent less configuration (using the DRAC and not an agent install on the ESX service console) with the protocole SNMP and IPMI. This provide us failure and pre- failure for detection for the ESX physical hardware. To get more configuration and trigger, you can use the protocol CIM and SNMP to the monitor the ESX service console itself. As soon as you understand well how Dell OpenManage work, is pretty easy to implement with ESX.

For performance and VMware consideration we don’t try to install the OpenManage Agent inside the service console.

[admin]

See this tread to get more information about how to use DellOpen Manage with the Dell Agent installed inside the service console

[RParker]

I don't know why some people seem to have a problem installing the Dell Openmanage on ESX host. There hasn't ever been a hint of a problem, there are no conflicts with ESX, and it's even a recommended install by Dell and VM ware (since the Dell machines are on the HCL) to use the openmanage.

The key reason you want to use the openmanage agents is because it allows you to monitor the health of the system, and you can reconfigure RAID and DRAC inside the openmanage if need be.

It doesn't hurt anything, it only benefits additional components inside ESX, and it's very small, 128Meg of SC RAM. That's tiny. You won't notice its there, but the benefit if having it, is very good, if for nothing else when you have to call for support you can login to the machine, and see ALL the pertinent info, TAG and component causing the problem, it's all in the logs.

WE use it in ALL DELL systems, windows, Linux, and ESX we don't have a problem, other people are afraid to use it.. why I don't know, but it's certainly not going to "clutter" the ESX server or affect the performance in any way.

[mcowger]

I have to agree with RParker on this one. Theres no real performance impact with installing the agents, they are very stable and offer some nice benefits.

--Matt

[admin]

I agree with you, if agent are on the compatibly guide they can be install on the service console. () If we have a look to the VMware roadmap, the orientation is to use ESX 3i architecture so installing agent inside the service console will no longer be possible and VMware recommend to third-party to develop software agent less. This technical paper () recommend to use open protocol for the management of ESX host (CIM, SNMP, VI API...) to perform management and monitoring.

We still use ESX 3.5 but we look forward and want an architecture compatible with ESX 3 and ESX 3i. For the additional capability such as reconfigure a RAID, we don't thing that is important to do this online because for all maintenance task we don't take change so we use the maintenance mode. For this reason is not important for us to have those capability. At the level of performance I also agree with you that Dell agent required less resources that some other agent. We have a large environment and manage agent (installation and upgrades) are time consuming for us so we prefer to use agent less configuration.

I don't have problem with installing agent on the host but if is not required for the organisation business requirements I prefer to don't install those agents. Install or not an agent depend of the organisation requirements and sometime influence by a personal preference!

[DanDill]

We're running 3 ESX hosts with OMSA installed on them talking back up to an IT Assistant server. The hardware fault/failure alerting is the main value, and installation and configuration has always been quite easy following the Dell document on it.

It also can somewhat monitor your VMs for up/downstatus and whatnot though VC is a better place to do that for our environment.

[jarends3]

I appreciate all the info. I'm not that terribly familar with the Dell OpenManage software (my of my previous experience has been with HP servers).

Many of our Windows based Dell servers run the OpenManage client and it provides a web interface.

Does the client that gets installed on an ESX host provide the same web interface, or is it only there to talk to an IT Assistant server?

[tWiZzLeR]

Just follow the instructions found here: . However, I noticed that the instructions in section 6.3 are incorrect as the path on the v5.3 DVD had changed to /mnt/cdrom/SYSMGMT/srvadmin/linux/supportscripts.

[DanDill]

To answer your question, yes, it provides the same web interface as your windows boxes on the same port (1311).

I did see a few scary gotchas in the notes for it so be sure to read the do's and dont's of running OMSA on an ESX machine. I believe one of them referenced something about don't make certain changes to the disk system using the web interface on an ESX machine so be sure to read/be aware of that part.