White Papers

Managing the Dell PowerEdge VRTX Chassis with Dell OpenManage Essentials

Executive Summary

The PowerEdge VRTX chassis is a new and innovative approach on an established

theme … bringing together server, networking, and storage in a compact package,

while allowing for the expansion of storage and processing power as needs grow. No

longer is the blades (referred to as server nodes in VRTX) concept limited to the

Datacenter … now it can exist in any office anywhere. The Dell PowerEdge VRTX

solution introduces several new, while maintaining many familiar, concepts for chassis

and server node management, and Dell OpenManage Essentials (OME) version 1.2

offers the most up-to-date solution for management of this new offering. Some new

features in OME v1.2 include:

• Discovery, inventory, and monitoring of the VRTX chassis and its server nodes

using the WS-Man protocol, a more WAN- and firewall-friendly protocol.

• A dedicated PowerEdge VRTX group in the device tree, where all discovered

chassis components will be grouped together.

• Inventory of the shared storage and PCIe components of the VRTX chassis,

including server node assignments.

• Firmware update of server node and shared chassis components.

• A completely new Map View … place your PowerEdge VRTX servers anywhere on

the globe in OME and let OME keep track of them (VRTX Enterprise license

required).

I. Setup of PowerEdge VRTX for Management

a. Setup in a Datacenter

The VRTX chassis is Datacenter-friendly, with the ability to fit the chassis into

5U of rack space with the appropriate kit. The optimal network environment is

expected in this environment, with plenty of bandwidth and reliable delivery.

Provisioning/setup of the chassis (or the Chassis Management Controller) for

management is very similar to the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis. Unlike the

M1000e, the WS-Man protocol is the preferred management protocol to get the

most thorough inventory and management of the chassis with OME. SNMP can

also be used, but the following is not supported with this protocol: shared

storage inventory, shared PCIe inventory, firmware updates, and the map

feature detailed below. When it comes to eventing, SNMP traps is the method

used, therefore, the chassis will need to have OME as its event destination.