Setup Guide

About Dell Lifecycle Controller

Integration for Microsoft System Center

2012 Virtual Machine Manager

Dell Lifecycle Controller Integration (DLCI) for Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

(SC2012 VMM) enables hardware configuration and provides a solution to simplify and improve the

process of hypervisor deployment on Dell servers. This plugin uses the remote deployment feature of the

Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller.

With Dell Lifecycle Controller Integration for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, you can

do the following:

• Auto discover unassigned Dell servers — connect the factory delivered Dell servers to the network,

power on the servers, and enter the provisioning server details for DLCI appliance to automatically

discover the servers.

Servers discovered by the appliance are known as unassigned servers, and these servers are available

for hypervisor deployment.

• Manually discover unassigned Dell servers — discover the 11th, 12th, and 13th generation of

PowerEdge servers and deploy the servers in a virtual environment.

• View inventory of discovered servers — key inventory details about the Dell servers are provided.

• Check for server compliance — ensure that the Dell servers are compliant.

Compliance of Dell Servers - For using the features available in the appliance, Dell servers must have

the required firmware versions of iDRAC, Lifecycle Controller (LC), and BIOS.

The appliance checks for the required versions of the preceding software and if the required versions

of the preceding software are present, then the server is considered as compliant.

• Prepare an ideal server configuration, also known as golden configuration — replicate this

configuration on the servers that are deployed in to the virtual environment.

– Edit and modify the golden configuration for boot order and BIOS.

– Customize dedicated hot spare (DHS) strategy for RAID.

• Create and maintain profiles and templates.

• Customize Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) — prepare customized WinPE

images with the latest Dell OpenManage Deployment Toolkit (DTK) drivers.

• Leverage LC Driver Injection feature on the latest factory delivered servers that are shipped with the

latest driver packs.

Deploy hypervisors with or without Lifecycle Controller (LC) Driver injection — from the appliance,

perform hypervisor deployment based on the golden configuration.

• Launch iDRAC Console from the DLCI Console to view inventory information and do troubleshooting.