iDRAC Enterprise vs iDRAC Express on Dell Server

Question

I have a Dell PowerEdge server with iDRAC6 Express and a PERC 6/iR (LSI 1068e) SAS RAID Controller.

I'm a bit confused about what this means.

Is it possible to login remotely to change bios/RAID configuration?

If this is not possible what can the express version do?

I'm using Ubuntu. Is it possible to setup the RAID from within the operating system, without the annoying reboot?

Solution 1

The short answer to this is, no. Unfortunately, you need the remote console capability to do this and that feature is only offered with the iDRAC Enterprise. You can only monitor your system (and perhaps do power control) with the Express version.

You can, however, purchase the riser card from Dell to upgrade your Express to Enterprise. We accidentally ordered our R710s with Express and had to buy the cards after-the-fact.

Solution 2

You most certainly can shutdown and reboot (even reboot to different bootable media). This is confirmed with idrac6 express firmware 1.8 on a dell t710.

Comments

[Disco]

I confirm that you "cannot" shutdown/reboot with idrac express

[Vincent Vancalbergh]

What does "monitor your system" entail? I can see uptime? network throughput? disk queue length? disk configuration? it's not clear at all what the Express version can do.. I hope you (anyone?) can shed some light on this...

[Ashmeet Singh]

You can perform tasks like SNMP and IPMI configuration, and firmware changes. I don't have the specific telemetry points that are available for monitoring, but there are many. A third party suite is needed for real-time monitoring. The principal difference between Express and Enterprise is that Enterprise provides a dedicated iDRAC NIC and virtual console capability. See: ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/… for details.

[eatingthenight]

with idrac6 you can 100% do power management. No remote console though.