Dell Lifecycle Controller Remote Services v2.50.50.50 Quick Start Guide September 2017 Rev.
Notes, cautions, and warnings NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your product. CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid the problem. WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death. Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. Dell, EMC, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Contents Chapter 1: Introduction................................................................................................................. 5 Advantages of using Lifecycle Controller...................................................................................................................... 5 Benefits of using iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller...................................................................................................... 6 Key features.....................................
Viewing the managed computer system using the Physical Computer System View................. 19 Job management............................................................................................................................................................... 20 Job types....................................................................................................................................................................... 20 System status..............................................
1 Introduction Dell Lifecycle Controller provides advanced embedded systems management to perform systems management tasks such as deploy, configure, update, maintain, and diagnose. It is delivered as part of integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) out-of-band solution and embedded Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) applications in the latest Dell servers.
Benefits of using iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller The benefits include: ● Increased Uptime — Early notification of potential or actual failures that help prevent a server failure or reduce recovery time after a failure. ● Improved Productivity and Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) — Extending the reach of administrators to larger numbers of distant servers can make IT staff more productive while driving down operational costs such as travel.
Advantages of using Lifecycle Controller Remote Services When Dell examined the most common management tasks and the inefficiencies associated with them, it discovered that the additional time taken for performing management tasks was not because of the tools, but it was because of how the functions were split between several tools.
Lifecycle controller also supports local one-to-one system management tasks through a graphical user interface (GUI) using the server’s KVM or the Virtual Console in iDRAC for operating system installation, updates, configuration, and for running diagnostics on single and local servers. This eliminates the need for multiple option ROMs for hardware configuration. For more information, see Lifecycle Controller User’s Guide, available at delltechcenter.com/lc.
● The Lifecycle Controller Online Help provides information about the fields available on the GUI and the descriptions for the same. To view the online help information in Lifecycle Controller user interface, click Help in the upper-right corner, or press . ● The Lifecycle Controller Release Notes is available with the product. To read the Release Notes in Lifecycle Controller user interface, click About , and then click View Release Notes.
○ For Dell EMC Serviceability Tools—https://www.dell.com/serviceabilitytools ● Dell EMC support site: 1. Go to https://www.dell.com/support. 2. Click Browse all products. 3. From the All products page, click Software, and then click the required link. 4. Click the required product and then click the required version. Using search engines, type the name and version of the document in the search box.
2 Remote Services Features Using Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services, you can perform the following operations: ● Deploy and Configure ● Monitor ● Maintain ● Create and schedule jobs Topics: • • • • Deployment and configuration Monitor Maintain Job management Deployment and configuration Using various Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services' capabilities, you can perform different configurations on a system throughout its lifecycle.
● Get and set any configurable iDRAC attribute ● Manage iDRAC user accounts RAID configuration The RAID configuration feature is used to manage the properties and capabilities of the RAID storage. The RAID storage is modeled using a collection of attributes, where there are collections for the enclosures, storage adapters, logical disks, physical disk drives, and PCIeSSD devices. Additionally, there is a configuration service that contains all the methods used to configure the RAID storage.
● ● ● ● Personalities (FCoE, ISOE, Layer 2 NIC) NIC partition bandwidth allocation Boot versus Offload I/O Identity Operating system deployment The operating system deployment feature is used to remotely deploy an operating system using WSMAN web services protocols that use CIFS and NFS network file sharing protocols. Remote activation of locally exposed embedded drivers such as a USB drive eliminates the need for physical media.
● Export the Server Configuration Profiles file with the password that has the hash values. Use the ExportSystemConfiguration method and include the password hash values that should be exported to the IncludeInExport parameter. The hash password can be generated with and without Salt using SHA256. Whether the Salt string is used or null, it should always be set along with the SHA256SystemPassword.
CSIOR is disabled. Also, system information reported from out-of-band interfaces such as WS-MAN and RACADM may not have correct information. Hardware inventory The hardware inventory information is cached on the persistent storage of Lifecycle Controller and is available to iDRAC and UEFI applications. It is used to export the hardware inventory from Lifecycle Controller to a text file on a remote share. You can remotely query the inventory of hardware components.
Firmware inventory Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services provide information about each of the component firmware installed on the target system and the available firmware images are cached in the Lifecycle Controller.
Maintain Using various Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services capabilities, you can maintain the health of a system throughout its lifecycle. You can use features such as remote firmware management, part replacement, server profile import or export, and provisioning server to maintain a system using Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services. Server configuration profiles — export or import Lifecycle Controller-Remote Services can export or import a Server Configuration Profiles file.
● Enabling PCI slots — PCI slots in the system that are disabled in the BIOS require two imports – one to enable the slot and another to configure the card in the slot. Example If the Slot1 BIOS attribute on the import system is disabled, the first import must contain the following: PAGE 19Provisioning Server The Provisioning Server feature in iDRAC allows newly installed servers to automatically discover the remote management console that hosts the Provisioning Server. The Provisioning Server provides custom administrative user credentials to iDRAC so that the management console can discover and manage the newly installed managed system.
● Use a registered profile to enumerate the implemented features. ● Invoke certain method based on implemented features. For more information about viewing the managed computer system using PCSV, see the Physical Computer System View Profile document available at www.delltechcenter.com/systemsmanagement. Job management Lifecycle Controller allows you to create, schedule, track, and manage system management tasks that are referred to as jobs.
3 Getting started with API collateral and links Getting started with any feature of Lifecycle Controller begins at the Dell TechCenter Lifecycle Controller home page — delltechcenter.com/LC. The home page contains various sections that reference URLs, and these referenced URLs are direct links to the corresponding sections. You can follow these steps to get started using the Lifecycle Controller API: 1. Identify the feature or the required management operation. 2.
Table 2. Profiles (continued) Profile Name Description BIOS and Boot Management The BIOS and Boot Management Profile extends the management capabilities of referencing profiles by adding the capability to represent the configuration of the system BIOS setup and to manage the boot of the system. CPU The DCIM CPU Profile describes the properties and interfaces for running system management tasks related to the management of processors within a system.
Table 2. Profiles (continued) Profile Name Description DCIM_LCService provider adds the following methods: RunePSADiagnostics () and ExportePSADiagnosticsResult() for the automatic diagnostics.
Table 2. Profiles Profile Name Description Role Based Authorization The DCIM Role Based Authorization Profile describes the properties and interfaces for running system management tasks related to the authorization. Sensors The DCIM Sensors Profile describes the properties and interfaces for running system management tasks related to the management of sensors within a system.
Managed object file The Common Information Model (CIM) is an open standard that defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them. This is intended to allow consistent management of these managed elements, independent of their manufacturer or provider. Files that contain the normative description for classes, properties, and methods are contained within the Managed Object File (MOF).
Attribute registry XML The attribute registry lists all the attributes and properties for the particular component in XML format. For attribute registries of RAID, NIC, iDRAC, BIOS, FC HBA, and PCIeSSD, see http://en.community.dell.com/dell-groups/dtcmedia/m/ mediagallery/20440476. Event message registry XML The message registry XML describes all messages, message IDs, and message arguments from all profiles.
● Enterprise Table 3.
4 Integrating the Lifecycle Controller API This section outlines the resources required to integrate the Lifecycle Controller API into an application: ● API Clients– Lists the API clients that are available to support WinRM or WSMAN. The API clients enable a you to create an application in a variety of programming languages. ● Best Practices Guide— Provides information about the common work flows, where in ready-to-use Python scripts are provided for all the common work flows.
● Other scripting examples — en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/1981.scripting-thedell-lifecycle-controller.aspx The Github repository "iDRAC-Redfish-Scripting" provides Python and PowerShell scripting examples for the iDRAC REST API with Redfish. The scripts illustrate key use cases for server inventory, configuration, monitoring and update. ● iDRAC REST API with Redfish Github repository — https://github.
5 Social media reference To obtain the most up-to-date information, go to the Dell TechCenter and search for the required information. Table 4. Product Information Product Name and topic Link on Dell TechCenter Lifecycle Controller en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/ 1979.lifecycle-controller.aspx integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/3204.dellremote-access-controller-drac-idrac.
6 Terms and definitions The following table lists the terms used in this document and their definitions. Table 5. Terms and definitions Term Definition LC Lifecycle Controller Enumerate Refers to WS-MAN ENUMERATE operation as described in Section 8.2 of DSP0226_V1.1 and Section 9.1 of DSP0227_V1.0 Get Refers to WS-MAN GET operation as defined in Section 7.3 of DSP00226_V1.1 and Section 7.1 of DSP0227_V1.
