Administrator Guide

Introduction
5 In-band or out-of-band: Advantages of iDRAC and iSM compared to OMSA | ID 423
1 Introduction
The Dell EMC OpenManage portfolio is a suite of tools to help IT admins manage PowerEdge servers.
OpenManage tools help IT administrators deploy, update, monitor, and manage IT assets and allows them to
quickly respond to issues. As a result, admins can manage Dell EMC PowerEdge servers efficiently in physical,
virtual, local, and remote environments by using in-band and out-of-band technologies.
While the in-band method has been the de facto management means for many years, many companies are
gradually adopting an out-of-band approach to systems management. The traditional, in-band approach of Dell
EMC has been anchored with the OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) component. The out-of-band
approach uses the iDRAC, which is embedded into each server, and requires no extra software. The Dell EMC
iDRAC Service Module (iSM) is a small OS-resident module that can provide operating system-related
information and capabilities to iDRAC. This additional functionality makes the combination of iDRAC and iSM a
viable replacement for OMSA functionality for many customers. Also, iSM offers several features that OMSA
cannot provide, and continues to provide added value and functionality.