idrac lcd panel manufacturer

The three LCD panel’s buttons and ID button have different functionality based on a security setting set in BBB (BMC BIOS Binary) and other tools. There is no method to set these states through the LCD menu system.

View and Modify (Default) - The user has full access to the LCD menu and can modify values (e.g. the IPv4 address, or the selection of the System Descriptor). If a value is being changed via the LCD AND a security lockout is sent remotely (either View Only or Disabled), then the session is terminated, the LCD returns to Home Mode, and all changes are discarded.

Disabled- The user has no access to the LCD menu nor the chassis ID button. The user cannot invoke the chassis ID functionality by pressing the ID button. In addition, the user can only see the System Descriptor String and the error messages.

The ID button if pressed for more than 15 seconds reset the iDRAC regardless of the disable state. The reset functionality can be disabled such that no iDRAC reset occurs when ID button is pressed for longer than 15 seconds.

If your Dell EMC PowerEdge system is equipped with an LCD panel, it can be used to configure or view the iDRAC IP address of the system. The LCD panel is available only on an optional front bezel.

From the Setup menu, use the iDRAC option to select DHCP or Static IP to configure the network mode. If Static IP is selected, the following fields are available:

When it comes to the dell servers, there are 2 ways to clear the event log. One of them does NOT require a restart, which is nice if your server is up and running. If your server is not booting into the OS, or if the iDRAC web interface is not working, there is a 2nd way involving the hardware that requires a restart. Let"s go through each method one at a time.

This method is great if you don"t want to restart your server, your iDRAC is configured with a known IP address, and you"re machine is up and running. You can do this method without internet access, as long as you can access your server via an IP address.To do this, the first step is to log into the IP address using your web browser. Mine is set to the default setting, which is 192.168.0.120.

Now you"ll be prompted with your user ID and password for your iDRAC. You should know this information, but if this is your first time accessing your iDRAC this way, the defaults are “root” for the username, and “calvin”, all lowercase, for the password. Make sure the dropdown box says “this iDRAC” and then click submit.

Click “clear log”. At this point, your event log should be cleared. You can log out of the iDRAC if you have nothing else to do here. Wait a few minutes, and the LCD screen on the front of your machine should go from Amber to the standard blue, indicating that there are no persistent errors at the moment. If after a few minutes, the screen is still amber, make sure to go through the errors using the buttons on the screen. If you are still getting an error, it could be that the problem is persistent and something in your machine is not ideal and needs to be fixed before clearing the event log, which will bring the screen back to standard blue. An example of this would be if your raid cables were missing or plugged into the wrong ports. In that instance, the LCD Amber error light will not go away until the machine has detected new Raid cables in the machine and then the machine is rebooted again.

One last thing to note here is that if you open the lid on your server, but have no other errors when your machine boots up, you will get an Amber LCD screen for only a minute while the machine boots, and the error will say “intrusion”, but this will go away after about a minute and the LCD screen will go back to blue.

Once it"s cleared, hit escape until you exit the Remote Access screen. At this point, your machine will continue to boot up as normal. Your LCD screen should go back to the standard blue soon, if there are no persistent errors. If it remains Amber after a minute, use the arrows on the LCD screen to see what errors are still coming up.

If it worked, you will enter this screen. Simply use the down arrow key to navigate all the way to the bottom of the list where it says to the IDRAC setting. Hit enter.

After 10 seconds, you will be given two options, to either view or clear the event log. You can clear it if you want, but this is a GREAT opportunity to see what is in the event log. (If you do not see the system event logs option you may need to update your idrac and system bios as this was a feature that was added later )

Once it"s cleared, hit escape until you exit the Remote Access screen. At this point, your machine will continue to boot up as normal. Your LCD screen should go back to the standard blue soon, if there are no persistent errors. If it remains Amber after a minute, use the arrows on the LCD screen to see what errors are still coming up.

Enable SNMPv1 in the iDRACs you wish to monitor. Install and setup Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana to work with eachother. Use the provided idrac-input.conf file and replace the values for “idracURLx” under “agent” with your own iDRAC IPs or hostnames. Restart Telegraf. Then, import the dashboard json file (or use Grafana Dashboard ID) to add the dashboard and panels to Grafana, selecting your own InfluxDB database after clicking “Import”. Data may take up to 2 minutes to fully populate the first time. Enjoy!

FeaturesUses Grafana variables to dynamically pull in all iDRACs listed in the Telegraf config file, and draw a new “row” section for each iDRAC that gets added.

Adding more data is as simple as adding the appropriate iDRAC OID to the Telegraf config file, and adding a panel to display the new data on the dashboard.

iDRAC has the capability to display a TON of data through SNMP and it’s easy to expand this dashboard to add more of it, per your collection and monitoring needs. I used the Dell MIB Files with an MIB Browser and the Dell EMC OpenManage SNMP Reference Guide to figure out the OIDs.

One of the only major data related problems I could not figure out was the proper display of Date & Time for system log entries. Dell outputs a date & time stamp for each log entry in the format: 20200420173454.000000-300. This is what is displayed in the system log table panel as Grafana can’t understand and re-format dates and times in this provided format it seems, to make it looks pretty, such as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS I have heard that Telegraf/InfluxDB may have a way for this data to be transformed into a better structure before it makes it to Grafana, although I have come up empty with easy or even semi-easy ways to do this. Hoping somebody else knows a fix that isn’t extremely involved.

Fix implemented per @krystiancharubin regex processor in idrac-input.confSometimes, for only a few seconds, the data in the tables repeats itself and gets out of line, even though the “group by” in the query has a limit of 1.

Now it should be rebooting. Watch the boot, and see if the POST error on boot for DRAC/iDRAC is still present. If so, try the Lifecycle Controller firmware upgrade.

The Dell Remote Access Controller, or DRAC, is an out-of-band management platform on certain Dell servers. The platform may be provided on a separate expansion card, or integrated into the main board; when integrated, the platform is referred to as iDRAC.

The Dell Remote Access Controllers (DRAC) and the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controllers (iDRAC) come in different versions, where a new (i)DRAC version is often linked to a new generation of Poweredge servers.

The hardware is often integrated on the motherboard of the server, and the combined product is termed iDRAC, where the "i" is for integrated. When iDRAC Express is used, the software and hardware systems management functions are shared with one of the server"s on-board network interfaces using a unique IP address. By contrast, iDRAC Enterprise version features a dedicated physical network interface.

iDRAC version 7 was introduced in conjunction with the release of Dell PowerEdge generation 12 servers in March 2012, and is only available on 12th generation models.

Earlier versions of the DRAC used ActiveX in Internet Explorer to provide a remote-console interface in a web browser; however, this was unpopular with non-Windows users who did not have access to Internet Explorer. The latest revision of the DRAC6 uses a Java application instead (launched from within the browser), though both the DRAC5 and iDRAC6 also provided the aforementioned platform-independent SSH access.

iDRAC6 is available in two levels: iDRAC6 Express and iDRAC6 Enterprise. iDRAC6 Express (which integrates features previously charged for in DRAC5) became a standard offering on Dell"s servers. Certain features are not available for the Express version, including the remote console functionality and the vFlash SD card slot. As with iDRAC, iDRAC6 Enterprise is a standard offering on blade servers

On 6 March 2012, software version 1.00.00 for the iDRAC7 was released for generation 12 servers. iDRAC 7 does not work on earlier generation servers although some of the new functions introduced with iDRAC 7 might be offered in iDRAC 6 releases.

With the introduction of iDRAC 7, the licensing model has changed. iDRAC 7 now supports lifecycle controller. Some features of Lifecycle controller are licensed and to access those features via iDRAC the correct licenses for those functions need to be enabled.

To take advantage of storage greater than 256 MB on the iDRAC6 enterprise, Dell requires that a vFlash SD card be procured through Dell channels. As of December 2011, Dell vFlash SD cards differ from consumer SD cards by being over-provisioned by 100% for increased write endurance and performance.

On a Linux client system the standard arrow and print screen keys cannot be used in the iDRAC6 Java virtual console application because of some incompatible key event IDs;