Manage Firmware and Driver Compliance by using Multiple Baselines in Dell EMC OpenManage Essentials This technical white paper provides information about managing hardware revision baseline in a data center by using Dell EMC OpenManage Essentials with different custom catalogs. Abstract This technical white paper provides information about the creation and usage of multiple custom catalog baselines.
Revisions Revisions Date Description February 2018 Initial release November 2018 OpenManage Essentials 2.5 release Acknowledgements This paper was produced by the following members of the Dell EMC Server Engineering team: Author: Sharad Awasthi, Software Principal Engineer in the Enterprise Systems Management programs Support: Sheshadri Rao (InfoDev) Other: The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc.
Create a custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials Contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Introduction ...............................................................................
Introduction Introduction This technical white paper provides information about the creation and usage of multiple custom catalog baselines. With the increasing demand in datacenter to maintain different group of servers on different firmware and driver baseline, this feature will help datacenter administrator to ease the operation. Primary use case for this feature is to have different catalogs generated by DRM filtered for specific use cases, and use them against the custom groups.
Create a custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials 1 Create a custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials This section covers the methods to create custom baseline and the points to consider while creating the baseline. 1.1 Create custom baseline by using the System Update portal The System update portal of OME has been redesigned by grouping similar actions together. As part of Catalog Baseline Action section, the “Create Catalog Baseline” action is listed. 1.
Introduction 2. In the Create Catalog Baseline dialog box, enter the name for the baseline and select the catalog file to import. Enter a baseline name and select repository manager file By default, OME creates the baseline name based on the current date and time. This is to avoid the duplicate names created for the custom catalog. If required, modify the name based on your requirements. 3. Select the catalog xml or cab file that must be imported as part of the operation.
Create a custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials 1.2 Create custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials The device portal context menu with respect to the user-created custom group has a new item added as “Associate Custom Baseline”. 1. Click Manage Devices, and then right-click the user-created custom group and select Associate Custom Baseline.
Introduction 5. In the Associate Catalog Baseline dialog box, click Create Catalog Baseline. Create catalog baseline in OpenManage Essentials 6. Enter or select data in the fields as described in Create custom baseline by using the System Update portal earlier in this technical white paper. 1.3 List a Custom Baseline This section describes about listing the custom baselines that are created and their association to custom group if exists.
Create a custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials Group name column in the table shows the group name if the catalog is associated to one or more groups. If the catalog is associated with more than one group, the baseline will be shown in each row per group. If the catalog is not associated then the group name row is empty. 1.4 Delete a Custom Baseline 1. Right-click the baseline name listed under List of Catalog Baselines, and then select Delete. Deleting a catalog baseline in OpenManage Essentials 2.
Introduction Associating a catalog baseline in OpenManage Essentials 2. In the Associate Catalog Baseline dialog box, the list of baselines that are already generated is displayed. Select any of them or create a new catalog baseline, if necessary.
Create a custom baseline in OpenManage Essentials List of catalog baseline Note—After the association is done, OME takes some time to reflect the changes because of the time taken to re-compute the applicable packages for all the devices under the group. Associating catalog baseline is possible only with the user-created custom group. This operation is not permitted on the system generated groups. You can associate the baseline only to the first level of custom group.
Introduction 1.6 Re-associate or de-associate a Custom Baseline in OpenManage Essentials After associating the group to a baseline, you can re-associate or de-associate a baseline. Associating and De-associating a catalog baseline 1. To re-associate, select Associate a Different Catalog Baseline. Complete the tasks as listed in Associate a Custom Baseline. 2. To disassociate, select De-Associate Catalog Baseline. The association with the group is removed.
Updates made to the System update portal 2 Updates made to the System update portal System update portal is updated to show the multiple associated baselines based compliance & grouped for the actions. New bar graph is added to provide the feature to list all the associated groups compliance. System update portal Note—Only the user-created custom groups that are associated will be shown in the bar graph, along with all the devices.
Introduction Compliant and noncompliant devices Non-inventoried systems, and Issues and Resolutions are added as actionable button items that are not group-specific. When clicked, the respective page is displayed.
Updates made to the System update portal If you click the Filtered by option, the Select System Update Target Devices and Device Groups dialog box is displayed. System update target devices and device groups You can filter devices either by using query or by using groups. After a group is selected, the Pie chart is displayed. But this filtering will not filter based on the baseline.
Introduction System update portal Note—To view the non-filtered devices and bar chart again, click View System Update Portal. If you are trying to update such devices, you can select the device only once. If you try to select both groups then OME displays an error message to block the operation.
View group-wise Catalog Baseline Association 3 View group-wise Catalog Baseline Association OpenManage Essentials 2.5 shows the association between Custom Group(s) and Catalog Baseline(s). To view group-wise catalog baseline association details on System Update portal, click View catalog Baseline Associations. Figure 15 shows two custom groups associations with two different catalog baselines. Note that VxFlex Ready Nodes group is by default associated to the Default catalog.
Introduction 4 View group-wise compliance of devices to a Catalog Baseline Association OpenManage Essentials 2.4 and later versions show information about the catalog baseline(s) associated with compliant or non-compliant device(s) belonging to custom group(s). To view the catalog baseline associations, on the System Update portal, switch to Compliant Systems tab or Non-Compliant Systems tab.
View group-wise compliance of devices to a Catalog Baseline Association Custom Group Baseline Association Similarly, Figure 18 shows the two devices that belong to the Custom Group 2 and the firmware baseline they are associated with (My Baseline 2).
Introduction A Technical support and resources Dell.com/support is focused on meeting customer needs with proven services and support. A.1 Related resources Referenced or recommended Dell publications: 20 Chassis discovery feature in OME: http://en.community.dell.
