Dell DSET utility breaks hardware monitoring on Dell Poweredge R710 Servers

[mikeyes]

I have 6 Dell Poweredge R710 servers. Each server is running ESX 4 update 1. On each server I ran the Dell DSET utility to generate a report for Dell tech support (I did not install DSET I only used it to run the report). After DSET was run and the host was rebooted the ability to see the hardware status was broken.

If you access the host directly with the vClient the tab that should contain the hardware status is empty. If you access the vCenter server and click the Hardware Status tab you get the error "Hardware monitoring service on this host is not responding or not available"

Vmware support worked on the server for a few hours and Dell tech support is trying to re-create the situation in their lab.

Has anyone seen anything like this before. I have found other posts talking about the loss of hardware status after installing Dell openmanage agents.

(I have removed and re-added the hosts as suggested in http://communities.vmware.com/thread/219556)

Thanks.

[cstep]

I have the exact same issue on one of my 5 hosts. I too ran (did NOT install) the DSET utility for a Dell Tech. Have you gotten any info on this?

[mikeyes]

Dell finally admitted that this was their fault. Even though you don't install DSET Dell was nice enough to leave behind a few rpm packages that interfere with the hardware monitoring.

I was able to fix it by removing these two packages:

-sblim-sfcc-2.1.0Dell-6.1.el4

-sblim-sfcb-1.3.2Dell-9.1.el4

-and installing the Update 2 for ESX 4.

Dell told me they would have this fixed by the time DSET 2.0 was released

I also found these steps as a possible solution BUT CANNOT CONFIRM THEM as I did not try them myself

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1) /etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog stop

2) rpm -e sblim-sfcb --nodeps

3) rpm -e sblim-sfcc --nodeps

4) rpm -qa | grep vmware-esx-cim - take note of the build number at the end since we'll be reinstalling this later

5) rpm -e vmware-esx-cim --nodeps

6) Good time to reboot here if allowed - but I was able to proceed w/o reboot

7) Grab vmware-esx-cim.xxxx.rpm from install CD - best to make sure build is exact or slightly newer (can be updated with an Update Manager scan later)

😎 /etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog start

-

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[cstep]

Would have been nice if they had stopped using the product if it caused these problems. My issue started last week. Looks like yours was in June.... I may try your alternate fix to see if it helps. Just for fun. Thanks for the info!

[Norcal_Sandman]

Cudos to Mikeyes! Dell Dset 2.0 definetly breaks hardware monitoring by just running the utility. I burnt many hours researching causes for this issue and mine was more complicated due to recent replacement of mobo in Dell PET610. Due to many changes...mobo and firmwares upgrades, I did not immediately relate the issue to the Dset util that I had ran prior to mobo replacement.

To resolve for ESX4 U1 I did the following

service sfcbd-watchdog stop

rpm -e sblim-sfcb --nodeps

rpm -e sblim-sfcc --nodeps

rpm -e vmware-esx-cim --nodeps

Transfer vmware-esx-cim-4.1.0-0.0.260247.i386.rpm from ESX4 U1 iso

rpm -ivh vmware-esx-cim-4.1.0-0.0.260247.i386.rpm

service sfcbd-watchdog start

Update hardware monitoring. Good to go again! Thanks Dell 😕

[rreynol]

We have used another way to deal with this issue that leaves the VMware RPMs and services alone.

First use rpm -qa to search for any Dell related RPM files:

root@esx08-in ~]# rpm -qa|grep -i dell
libcmpiCppImpl0-2.0.0Dell-1.1.el4
sblim-sfcb-1.3.2Dell-9.1.el4
sblim-sfcc-2.1.0Dell-6.1.el4

Use the rpm -e command to remove them

[root@esx08-in ~]# rpm -e sblim-sfcb-1.3.2Dell-9.1.el4
[root@esx08-in ~]# rpm -e sblim-sfcc-2.1.0Dell-6.1.el4
[root@esx08-in ~]# rpm -e libcmpiCppImpl0-2.0.0Dell-1.1.el4

Now the upgrade to the new version of ESX should work fine.  I had the bad experience of attempting the other steps while in the middle of an upgrade and ended up corrupting the initrd and had to rebuild ESX.