White Paper

Dell KACE and OpenManage Essentials
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Integrating Dell K1000 with OME
The features of the Dell|KACE K1000 Systems Management Appliance are exceptionally well suited to
manage a distributed desktop environment. But what about managing the servers in your environment?
Obviously, most of the K1000 features such as automated inventory and machine labeling, server
operating system patching, Dell driver and firmware updates for servers, OVAL and SCAP vulnerability
assessment, scripted configuration management, and reporting also work well for managing servers. A
key feature that’s often a requirement for server management that you may also need is active system
monitoring based on protocols like SNMP or IPMI. While the K1000 can perform SNMP scans to assist in
device discovery, it doesn’t receive SNMP traps to assist in identifying issues with those servers.
In any IT environment, 24/7 accessibility to the data center is essential in order to proactively monitor
system health, identify faults, and automatically notify IT administrators for immediate resolution of
these faults. Dell OpenManage Essentials (OME) allows IT organizations to actively monitor Dell servers,
non-Dell Servers
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, and other devices via industry standard SNMP and IPMI protocols. By configuring
devices to send SNMP traps/alerts and IPMI Platform Event Traps (PET) to an OME management station,
OME acts as a centralized monitoring application.
Many IT organizations have implemented a centralized mechanism for tracking and handling these
server faults such as hard drive failure, loss of network connection etc. These server faults are
typically managed through a service desk or a help desk. KACE 1000 Service Desk can receive alerts
information from OME, then open a trouble ticket and assign it to an IT administrator for remediation.
Information contained within the alert is assigned into the appropriate fields within the email that will
generate the ticket so that the necessary reference information is available to the assigned
administrator. In this fashion, complete control can be maintained for those faults that require
intervention and remediation.
Configuring OME and K1000
Dell OpenManage Essentials is a Windows-based systems management console that replaces Dell IT
Assistant. A physical or virtual server running Windows Server 2008 will be required to run OME. This
installation is quite simple and largely self-contained. OME includes Microsoft SQL Server® Express for
small deployments. If you plan to manage a large environment, however, OME supports use of Microsoft
SQL Server Enterprise.
1. Install OME
2. Launch the OME console and select Manage  Discovery and Inventory.
3. In the left pane, select Discovery Ranges  Add Discovery Ranges to define an IP range for
discovering your servers.
4. Enter the IP address / range or a list of DNS hostnames for the machines you want to monitor,
and select an applicable protocol, provide credentials then click Finish.
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Supported only if the corresponding MIB is imported into OME.