VCAC 6.0 Physical Server Deployment DellBlade

[RaymundoEC]

Hello sirs,

Just to ask if someone has any experience on troubleshooting/deploying physical server provisioning will Dell iDrac from vCAC 6.0, since I have made all the steps needed to this happens, It simply doesn't work, I checked all twice:

• Create endpoint with iDrac credentials
• Reservations for physical server
• Build profile with  Image.ISO.Location,Image.ISO.Name, Image.ISO.Name,Image.ISO.UserName and Image.ISO.Password set.
• The blue print is also using the WF for physical server provisioning and adding the Build profile from the step before.
  

I just get installingOS on the processing the request, but nothing happens on the server side,the vCAC just turn on the server but stops there.

In addition I'm sharing the ISO image for Windows 2012 from WebDav, and this image is prepare with sysprep in order to be automatic enough to be installed unattended.

Any help will be really appreciated!!!!

+vRay

[Michael_Rudloff]

Raymundo Escobar wrote:

Hello sirs,

Just to ask if someone has any experience on troubleshooting/deploying physical server provisioning will Dell iDrac from vCAC 6.0, since I have made all the steps needed to this happens, It simply doesn't work, I checked all twice:

• Create endpoint with iDrac credentials
• Reservations for physical server
• Build profile with  Image.ISO.Location,Image.ISO.Name, Image.ISO.Name,Image.ISO.UserName and Image.ISO.Password set.
• The blue print is also using the WF for physical server provisioning and adding the Build profile from the step before.
  

I just get installingOS on the processing the request, but nothing happens on the server side,the vCAC just turn on the server but stops there.

In addition I'm sharing the ISO image for Windows 2012 from WebDav, and this image is prepare with sysprep in order to be automatic enough to be installed unattended.

Any help will be really appreciated!!!!

+vRay

I only ever worked with HP and UCS on physical deployments (painful) - but I BELIEVE the iDRAC deployment is similar to HP. In the UCS world it only deploys via PXE - for HP it mounts the ISO in the management interface / KVM and boots from it. So I think iDRAC works similar.

So if you iso is located on WebDav, the management interface of your blades need to be on the same network so it can mount the iso. Usually, or at least in all / most environments I worked with - vCAC and the management of the physical stack is hardly on the same network - which might be your issue.

Plus bear in mind also - your image / OS will need to have the vCAC agent installed as part of the deployment, otherwise vCAC will never know that the OS has been installed and the process will sit on "In Progress" and eventually fail.

So the network part is quite crucial. If your blade is being powered on at least - maybe try PXE boot instead ? So rather than mounting the iso in your iDRAC kvm via vCAC, maybe try doing it via PXE - something like SCCM / Razor and so on. You might have more luck with that.

Having said all that - physical integration is flakey at best. I had a ticket open with VMware for probably three months and we have given up. So it might not be a network issue in your case - but a a bug after all - not sure without seeing your environment.

I see you use vCAC 6.0 as well and I know a company I worked for used vCAC 6.0 successfully with iDRAC - but also had to "fix" some issues with vCO - for example - for some reason physical servers didn't like talking to vCAC via its agent so we had to find a vCO workaround using powershell to force the install to be "done" in vCAC.

List goes on.

So if you rely on using vCAC for physical server deployment - start on network and check that the iso is actually being mounted in your iDRAC interface - if it does - check the boot order so it boots from the virtual drive. If that fails - like I say - try PXE maybe.

My suggestion though : Don't use vCAC or try 6.2 in a lab - apparently a lot of changes have been made in physical Endpoints.

[RaymundoEC]

Thanks Michael, since a long time passed because end user was silent, I could re take this issue again, and you are right about what you mentoion, it is something between the iDrac and the way to mout the iso to the console, I'm guess the .NET WF wich is used from vRA doesn't like to talk with iDRAC as he does with ILO or UCS consoles.

The work around is to deploy PXE enviroment for this propouses, I mean in the case of Dell iDRAC, (TFTP, DHP -options-,etc.).

+vRay

[Charanjitsingh]

Hi,

I am planning to do the same, my concern is how VRA will talk to PXE, ?can it be provisioned by VRA workflows?

Thanks

[daphnissov]

vRA 7 does not support provisioning of Dell physical hosts.

[RaymundoEC]

check this one it is a kind of old, but it help me to make it possible thru the VRO wf and from there attached to the BB in vRA.

Auto Deploy plug-in - VMware vCenter Orchestrator Blog - VMware Blogs

hope this helps.

[Charanjitsingh]

thanks,,m but would it work with VRA 7 , my only concern is how VRO will communicate to PXE server.

Thanks

[Charanjitsingh]

I am planning to deploy Linux and Windows Server via PXE boot, would AutoDeploy help here using VRA workflow.

[rudloffm]

Not sure I understand your question? You're talking about physical servers ?