White Paper

Enhancements to iDRAC7 Alert Notification
3
Executive summary
Alerts and actions can be set for certain events that occur on Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers. Event alerts
provide immediate notification about an event, plus information about the action the system requires
to address the event.
The newest version of the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC7 version 1.30.30) for Dell
PowerEdge 12
th
generation servers support more types of alert mechanisms and improves the user
experience through an updated web interface. With the latest enhancements, all of the alert features
now focus more on out-of-band support without the need to install additional host software.
Introduction
The iDRAC7 with Lifecycle Controller is a Dell systems management solution for Dell PowerEdge
servers. These controllers provide a way of proactively notifying IT administrators of abnormalities,
called events, that may cause interruptions or system failure.
Events occur when the status of a component is outside the range of a predefined condition. An event
notification occurs when alerts and actions are set. If an event matches a filter, and the filter is
configured to generate an alert, an alert is sent to a preconfigured destination.
Alerts can take the form of an email alert, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) alert,
Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) alert, remote system log (syslog) alert, or Web
Services (WS) Events alert. Each individual event can also be set with a different system action
including power cycle, reboot, and power off.
To arrange immediate notification in the case of an event, you can set alerts and actions using the
iDRAC7 web interface or command-line interface (CLI). Alerts provide information about events and
allow you or the system to take the necessary action to remedy an event before a system failure
occurs causing costly downtime in the data center. iDRAC7 now supports more types of alerts and
offers an improved, user-friendly web interface.
Feature enhancements
Management controllers on previous generation Dell servers—early DRAC and iDRAC versions, and the
baseboard management controller (BMC)—supported only Platform Event Trap (PET) alerts. These
IPMI alerts were confined to events generated by IPMI sensors, and did not include events generated
by subsystems such as storage or memory.
Additionally, only servers with Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator (OMSA) could send SNMPv1
alerts. With the latest version of iDRAC7, SNMP alerts no longer require an operating system or agent
such as OMSA. With the latest enhancements to the alert notification feature in iDRAC7, monitoring
your PowerEdge systems is easier than ever. These feature enhancements include:
 Out-of-band SNMP alerts
 Authenticated email alerts
 Events logging to remote syslog