White Papers

Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter: Enabling a Dell Server for Server Management in vCenter

Introduction

The Dell Management plugPlug-in for VMware vCenter is a virtual appliance which that can be used to

reduce tools and tasks associated with management and deployment of Dell servers in your virtual

environment. It The plug-in reduces complexity by natively integrating the key management

capabilities into the vCenter console, and. It minimizes risk with hardware alarms, streamlined

firmware updates, and deep visibility into inventory, health, and warranty details.

The Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter is designed to streamline the management processes

in your data center environment by allowing you to use VMware vCenter to manage your entire

infrastructure- b—both physical and virtual. From firmware updates to bare metal deployment, the Dell

Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter will expand and enrich your data center management

experience with Dell PowerEdge servers.

This whitepaper provides all necessarythe information you need to enable prepare a Dell Server ready

for server management in vCenter using the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter. This

involvesWe describe the steps you will take to set up a connection profile for Dell hosts in a vCenter,

running an inventory, and fixing compliance issues on those hosts.

Audience and scope

This whitepaper is intended for sale engineers, field application engineers, test engineers, architects,

or IT administrators who are involved in the decision- making process for the planningdesign,

configuration, and operation of a dynamic datacenter. The scope of the this document is to provide a

detailed procedure towards that describes setting up a Dell Server for server management in vCenter.

This whitepaper is intended for sale engineers, field application engineers, test engineers, architects,

or IT administrators who are involved in the decision making process for the planning, configuration,

and operation of a dynamic datacenter. This document is intended to assist users in using the Dell

Management Plug-in for managing vSphere hosts that are Dell Servers in a vCenter.

Prerequisites

Readers are expected to have a working knowledge of networking, VMware vSphere, virtual networking

concepts, Windows™ W2KR8, and the Linux environment. Requirements Software requirements are

VMware ESX/ESXi

4.0 or later host installation and VMware vCenter

Readers are expected to know the stepshow to install a VMware ESX/ESXi

hypervisor on a server and

how to add it to a vCenter as a vSphere host.

Readers are also expected to know the steps for installinghow to install Dell Management Plug-in for

VMware vCenter and registering it to a vCenter. More information for installation and registering the

plug-in to a vCenter can be found in Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter User’s Guide.

Steps to enable Dell Servers servers for management

User needs to perform the following steps in order to start managing Dell hosts from the ‘Dell Server

Management’ tab from in vSphere Client:

1. Create a connection profile and associate the Dell hosts

2. Run hardware inventory on Dell hosts so that necessary hardware information is collected

3. Fix any compliance issues that are reported by vSphere Host Compliance