White Paper

Use Case Study: Using Active System For VMware Cluster Environment Configuration
12
Discover Chassis
Once you have defined the networks and virtual identities for your environment you are ready to
discover your blade chassis using Active System Manager. Chassis discovery will be initiated by
providing the CMC IP Address of the chassis you wish to manage. It is critical that your Active System
Manager virtual appliance and the chassis you wish to manage have network connectivity to one
another via the out of band management network in order for the discovery process to be successful.
You can discover your chassis either from the “Home” menu or from the “Devices” menu by selecting
the “Discover Chassis” option. Then when prompted, provide the IP address of the chassis you wish to
discover. You must also provide the chassis credentials to enable discovery of the chassis. The Dell
Default credentials are automatically selected for you. If you have changed the credentials of the CMC
you are trying to discover, you will need to create a new credential within Active System Manager
containing the username and password required for access. Proceed to select the chassis you have
identified for discovery and complete the wizard to start the discovery process, which will inventory
the chassis, I/O Modules, servers, and networking devices in the chassis. Keep in mind that Active
System Manager has a list of specific supported hardware, if you have unsupported hardware in the
chassis Active System Manager will not inventory these devices. The discovery process may take several
minutes to complete.
Create Management Template
Prior to configuring the chassis, an Active System Manager Management Template must be created
which will specify the baseline configuration for the managed devices. To create a management
template select “Create Management Template” option from either the “Home” or the “Templates”
menu.
Provide a name and description for your template. Specify the management networking you would like
to use for your chassis, servers, and I/O Modules. You may choose to use existing IP addresses, assign
an address via DHCP, or specify a static IP address from one of the management networks you have
defined. Next, you must specify the credentials for your chassis, servers, and I/O Modules. You may
choose to keep the credentials that you created for your chassis at discovery or create and assign new
ones. You must also create credentials for the servers and I/O Modules. These credentials will be
assigned to all devices once the management template is selected for configuration of a chassis.
Optionally, you may also define any additional usernames and roles you would like to add to the
management accounts for the CMC and the server iDRACs, as well as populate the monitoring, NTP,
power, DNS, VLAN, and console access information you would like specified for your environment.
NOTE: Use extreme caution when setting VLANs for your CMC or iDRAC devices. Setting these without
the proper external environment configuration and routing could cause you to lose network
connectivity to these devices. In addition, only CMC and iDRAC support VLAN tagging, the Dell
PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator does not. As a result, using VLAN tagging for an Active System
Management Infrastructure requires supporting both untagged and tagged VLANs on the out of band
management switch connection to the CMCs as well as routing between these tagged and untagged
VLANs in your environment.
Now that management template creation is completed, the system is prepared to configure a chassis
that has already been discovered.