Users Guide

● Improved productivity and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) — Extending the reach of administrators to larger number
of distant servers can make the IT staff more productive while driving down operational costs such as travel.
● Secure environment — By providing secure access to remote servers, administrators can perform critical management
functions while maintaining server and network security.
● Enhanced embedded management — Lifecycle Controller provides deployment and simplified serviceability through the LC
GUI for local deployment, Remote Services WS-Man and iDRAC RESTful API with Redfish interfaces for remote deployment
integrated with OpenManage Enterprise, OpenManage Essentials, and partner consoles.
For more information on iDRAC, see the iDRAC User's Guide available at https://www.dell.com/idracmanuals . For more
information on wsman, see Lifecycle Controller User's Guide available at https://www.dell.com/idracmanuals .
What's new in this release?
The following are the updates in this release:
● Added support for DellEMC PowerEdge R640, R740, R740xd, R940, and C6420 servers
● Added support to perform disk erase (secure and nonsecure disks) in the Retire and Repurpose feature
● Added support for the UEFI 2.5 Network and Firmware Management Protocols
● Added support for the DUP dependency to handle component dependencies
● Added option to collect iDRAC debug logs with the Support Assist report export feature
● Added support to create virtual disk for NVMe drives by using Dell PERC S140 - Windows RAID and Linux MD RAID
● Added certificate management for secure UEFI Boot
Key features
The key features of Lifecycle Controller are:
● Provisioning — Entire preoperating system configuration from a unified interface.
● Deploying — Simplified operating system installation with the embedded drivers on Lifecycle Controller. Unattended
installation mode is available for Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 operating systems.
● Download drivers for operating system installation from downloads.dell.com.
● Patching or updating — Operating system agnostic, and reduced maintenance downtime with direct access to updates
from . It simplifies firmware updates by maintaining a working version for rollback.
● Servicing — Continuous availability of diagnostics without depending on a hard-disk drive. Ability to flash firmware
automatically, while replacing components such as a PowerEdge storage controller, NIC, and power supply unit. Support
for VLAN in network configuration.
● System erase — Deletes the server and storage-related data on selected components of a server. You can delete
information on BIOS, Lifecycle Controller data (LC logs, configuration database and rollback firmware versions), iDRAC
settings, and storage components on the server.
NOTE: You cannot delete the iDRAC license file.
● Security — Support local key encryption.
● Enhanced Security — Support for TLS 1.2, 1.1, and 1.0. To enhance security, default setting is TLS 1.1 and higher.
● Restoring the server — Back up the server profile (including RAID configuration) and restore the server to a previously
known state. Importing a server license, firmware rollback, and restoring system configuration in case of system board
replacement.
● Hardware inventory — Provides information about the current and factory system configuration.
● Lifecycle Controller logs for troubleshooting.
Licensable features in Lifecycle Controller
Lifecycle Controller features are available based on the type of license (Basic Management with IPMI, iDRAC Express, iDRAC
Express for Blades, or iDRAC Enterprise) that you purchase. Only licensed features are available in the Lifecycle Controller GUI.
For more information about managing licenses, see the iDRAC User's Guide available at https://www.dell.com/idracmanuals .
The following table lists the Lifecycle Controller features available based on the license purchased.
8
Introduction