DRAC4 on a Linux PE2850: useful?

[Jay Levitt]

On 2/19/2008 4:26 PM, Jeff Larsen wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2008 1:53 PM, Jay Levitt <lists-lpedge at shopwatch.org> wrote:
>> I saw the "How to get something useful out of a DRAC 5?" thread, and I
>> have a similar question:
>>
>> I've got a PE2850 running Centos 5.1 at a remote data center, with a
>> DRAC4/i installed and networked.
 >>
>> I can get to the DRAC, but I have yet to get it to do anything useful.
>> Last time I tried working with remote access, it was on a PE1750, which
>> has IPMI 1.5 and a very broken serial-over-lan function.  At the time,
>> everyone said "What you really need is a DRAC".
>> 
>> Well, now I have a machine with a DRAC, and: color me unimpressed! 
[snip]

 > I have not shared your troubles with DRAC 4. I use IE7 (ignoring the
 > security certificate warning of course). But I only use the console
 > with servers NOT running X. Begs the question, why run X on a remote
 > server? X may be too network intensive to be reliable via the DRAC
 > console.

Fair enough - and the answer being "Because that's what was running when 
I left the colo".  Obviously I shouldn't have done that, but I did, and 
let's pretend that sshd is now hosed; isn't the whole point of the DRAC 
to let me get in, no matter what, and fix that without being at the machine?


>> Also, if I were to buy new Dell hardware now, it sounds like the DRAC5
>> is even worse... is there some third-party device that gives the same
>> advantages as the DRAC is supposed to (e.g. separate from the machine,
>> but "inside access" to monitoring, unlike a KVM)?

[John Oliver recommends a Belkin OmniView]

Unfortunately, that doesn't get me what I want; the big advantage of the 
DRAC (I thought) is that you are "inside" the machine, on the PCI bus, 
and can configure and monitor things that you couldn't do from a serial 
console - like a hard shutdown, for example.

> --
> Jeff
> 
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