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Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter: Discovery of Dell Bare-Metal Servers
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Prerequisites
For Auto-Discovery to occur, several conditions must be met:
 Power: You must connect the server to the power outlet; however, the server does not need to be
powered on.
 Network connectivity: The server’s iDRAC must have network connectivity and must communicate
with the provisioning server over port 4433. You can obtain the IP address using a DHCP server or
manually specified in the iDRAC Configuration Utility.
 Additional network settings: If using DHCP, enable the Get DNS server address from DHCP setting
so that DNS name resolution can occur.
 Provisioning service location: The iDRAC needs to know the IP address or hostname of the
provisioning service server. There are several ways you can accomplish this (See Provisioning
service location).
 Account access disabled: You must enable the administrative account access to the iDRAC and if
there are any iDRAC accounts with administrator privileges, you must first disable them from within
the iDRAC Web console. Once Auto-Discovery completes successfully, the administrative iDRAC
account is enabled.
 Auto-Discovery enabled: The server’s iDRAC must have Auto-Discovery enabled so that the Auto-
Discovery process can begin.
Provisioning service location
There are several ways that the Provisioning Service Location is obtained by iDRAC during Auto-
Discovery.
 Manually specified in the iDRAC: You can manually specify the location in the iDRAC Configuration
Utility under LAN User Configuration, Provisioning Server.
 DHCP Scope Option: You can specify the location using a DHCP Scope Option.
 DNS Service Record: You can specify the location using a DNS Service Record.
 DNS Known Name: The DNS server specifies the IP address for a server with the known name
DCIMCredentialServer.
If the provisioning service value is not manually specified in the iDRAC console, the iDRAC attempts to
use the DHCP scope option value. If the DHCP Scope option is not present, it attempts to use the
Service record value from DNS.
For detailed information on how to configure the DHCP Scope option and DNS Service Record, refer to
the Dell Auto-Discovery Network Setup Specification
(http://media.community.dell.com/en/dtc/attach/dell%20auto-
discovery%20network%20setup%20specification.pdf)