DRAC and VNC?

[Pthagonal]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Adam Nielsen <adam.nielsen at uq.edu.au>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We're about to buy a new Dell server to replace an old one that's just
> gone out of warranty, and since it'll be hosted in a data centre I'd
> like to have out-of-band remote access to it.
>
> I'm looking at getting a DRAC card, but it seems that for some reason
> you still need to use a web browser to get remote access to the console.
>  I've used this before with HP RACs and it's a nightmare trying to get
> the Java applets working properly in Firefox under Linux.
>
> I've seen a few tantalising hints that the DRACs use the VNC protocol
> internally, so I was wondering whether it's possible to use a VNC client
> and do away with the web browser altogether?  This would make it *much*
> easier to maintain under Linux.
>
> Alternatively is there another way to get to the remote text-mode
> console?  I would've thought that SSH'ing into the DRAC would be perfect
> to use the remote Linux console, and the BIOS, if that's still text mode
> on Dell's servers.
>
> Failing this, does anyone know of any third party remote access devices
> that work with Dell servers and are easily accessed by Linux clients?
>
>
I respectfully suggest you're worrying too much about this. I have a few
Poweredge 840 machines dotted around various remote sites all running
CentOS. On the rare occasions I need to reboot them to change to an updated
kernel I usually get a console connection open via the DRAC so I can watch
the reboot in detail and it just works fine. I connect from various clients
depending which desk or laptop I'm at- always Firefox, but from CentoS 4.x ,
CentOS 5.x, Ubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu 8.04, XP and Vista I've never had a single
problem. Yes it's a Java applet but it just works for me with no hassle. The
underlying console connection does indeed seem to be vnc- I have to open
port 5900 on the firewalls as well as https to reach the DRAC's web server,
so that's a big hint!


-- 
Cheers,

Tony
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