White Papers

5 Dell EMC | Using USB NIC to Manage OEM Appliances

1 Introduction

USB NIC feature is available on all PowerEdge systems. It enables access to iDRAC interfaces including the

web interface, CLI (RACADM), Redfish, WSMan, and SSH. Following are some of the key aspects of this

features:

 Enables you to access iDRAC through the host OS without knowing the iDRAC IP address.

 Provides access to the iDRAC using USB NIC IP address.

 Especially helpful when there is no physical network connection to iDRAC or there is no management

station available.

 Access iDRAC from host OS even if the server NIC is disabled.

 Available on most Windows, Linux and ESX operating systems.

OS to iDRAC pass-through link is established through the internal USB bus. When using this method to

access iDRAC, all the functionalities of iDRAC, including login credentials, remain the same.

When the USB NIC feature is enabled, default IP addresses are assigned to iDRAC and the host OS. The

following table provides the default IP addresses:

Default IP addresses for USB NIC

Server generation

iDRAC IP

OS IP

generation

169.254.0.1

169.254.0.2

generation

169.254.1.1

169.254.1.2