Technical White Paper Server-Initiated Discovery with OpenManage Enterprise 3.4 This technical white paper provides information about automatic discovery of servers in OpenManage Enterprise (OME). Abstract What if servers in your data center could announce their presence and automatically be managed by OME? With the Server-Initiated Discovery feature in OME 3.4, servers can automatically notify OME of their presence and get discovered by OME. Read on to know more.
Revisions Date Description October 2020 Initial release Acknowledgements Authors: OpenManage Enterprise (OME) Engineering Pushkala Iyer Ashwani Arora Rakesh Ayolasomyajul Dan Phelps Raju Datla The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Table of contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Table of contents ....................................................................................................................
Executive summary Traditionally, managing servers with OpenManage Enterprise requires the administrator to first configure discovery jobs with IP ranges and credentials. With the introduction of factory random passwords that are unique per device, this discovery configuration is an onerous task. With OpenManage Enterprise 3.4, servers running iDRAC firmware version 4.00.00.00 can automatically initiate contact with the management console and get discovered.
1 Server-Initiated Discovery in OME 3.4 This technical whitepaper describes how OME 3.4 can automatically discover servers in a data center, based on signals sent by servers to announce their presence. Servers can now automatically locate the console by querying the DNS and initiate their own discovery. The following topics are discussed in this paper: • • • • • 1.
1.3 Navigating the Server-Initiated Discovery workflow User workflow is detailed in this section. 1. The administrator registers the OME instance with the DNS by using the TUI as shown in Figure 2 Figure 2 Configure DNS in OME by using TUI 2. The administrator can then configure the DNS directly from OME, by selecting the Configure Server Initiated Discovery option in the TUI as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Figure 4 Enable Server Initiated Discovery in TUI 3. After successful updates to the DNS server, the following confirmation message is displayed. In-case security policies prevent updates to the DNS server, the entries can be manually configured in DNS. Figure 5 Confirmation message indicating server-initiated discovery is enabled in the TUI Server-Initiated Discovery with OpenManage Enterprise 3.
4. If unsuccessful, then the error message is displayed with details. Figure 6 Error in enabling server-initiated discovery in the TUI 5. To navigate to the Server-Initiated Discovery page in OME, click Monitor → Server-Initiated Discovery as shown in Figure 7 and Figure 8. Figure 7 View the Server-Initiated Discovery option in OME Server-Initiated Discovery with OpenManage Enterprise 3.
Figure 8 View the Server-Initiated Discovery page in OME 6. The Import option on the Server-Initiated Discovery page can be used to upload a CSV file consisting of ServiceTag and credentials. To view a sample CSV file of the server credentials, click Download sample CSV file. Figure 9 Import server credentials into OME 7. After successful import of the CSV file, the server credentials are displayed on the Server-Initiated Discovery page.
Figure 10 Credentials of servers are available in OME 8. Once the servers notify OME of their presence, the announced time information is updated. If the approval process is set to Automatic, a job is initiated to discover all those servers that have initiated contact with OME within 10 minutes of the first signal. Figure 11 List of servers that have initiated contact with OME 9. The status changes to Job Submitted for Discovery after automatic discovery job starts.
Figure 13 Configure the Discovery-Approval policy 11. Once discovered, the servers automatically appear on the OME All-Devices page and can be managed like any other server. Figure 14 Servers that signaled OME and got discovered are displayed on the All Devices page 1.4 Security with Server-Initiated Discovery When a server initiates contact with OME to announce its presence, OME ensures that it is a valid Dell server by checking the factory identity certificate.
with OME. As an added security measure, when the server is discovered, the thumbprint of the SSL certificate is also verified with that provided by iDRAC. 1.5 A.1 Troubleshooting Server-Initiated Discovery Issues Troubleshooting steps The status of the servers does not change to Announced or Discovered. Check DNS configuration. Also check if the domain name on servers matches that of OME. If both the above match, check if the announcement came in to OME via the application.log.
