The Dell Remote Access Controller or DRAC is an interface card by Dell which provides out-of-band management. The multinational technology company Dell Inc develops manufactures sells and supports Personal computers and other computer-related products In Computing, out-of-band management (sometimes called lights-out management or LOM) involves the use of a dedicated management channel for device The controller has its own processor, memory, battery, network connection, and access to the system bus. Key features include power management, virtual media access and remote console, all available through a supported web browser. This gives system administrators the ability to configure a machine as if they were sitting at the local console (terminal). A system administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin, is a person employed to maintain and operate a Computer system and/or network. A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into and displaying data from a Computer or a Computing
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Power Management
With the DRAC enabled and by having its own separate network connection a user may login and reboot the system even if the core operating system has crashed. If the correct drivers are loaded onto the Operating system the DRAC will attempt to shutdown the system gracefully. Without this feature and with the system running, the remote console can be used to access the operating system to shut it down.
Remote console
The remote console features of the DRAC let you interface with the computer as if you were sitting in front of it, and indeed you even share the local inputs from keyboard and mouse as well as video output (sound is not supported remotely). This is accomplished through an Active X or Java plugin (depending on the model) which gives you a window displaying the video of the local terminal and takes mouse and keyboard input. ActiveX is a Component object model (COM developed by Microsoft for Windows. Java refers to a number of Computer software products and specifications from Sun Microsystems that together provide a system for developing Application software This behavior is almost identical to other remote access solutions such as VNC or RDP. In computing Virtual Network Computing ( VNC) is a graphical Desktop sharing system which uses the RFB protocol to remotely control another Computer Remote Desktop Protocol ( RDP) is a multi-channel protocol that allows a user to connect to a computer running Microsoft Terminal Services. In fact, the DRAC uses the VNC protocol.
Virtual media
The DRAC enables you to mount remotely shared disk images as if they were connected to the system. When this is combined with the remote console you have the ability to completely re-install an operating system, a task which had traditionally required local console access to the physical machine. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination The system console, root console or simply console is the text entry and display device for system administration messages particularly those from the BIOS Virtual media can be controlled through the browser or through the OpenManage tools provided by Dell. OpenManage, a Dell Inc product consists of a number of Network management and Systems management applications
Access
The main DRAC management is performed via a web interface. The default user name is `root` and the default password is `calvin` for all generations of the DRAC. Starting with the DRAC 3 Microsoft Active Directory can also be used for authentication either with Dell AD Schema Extensions or Standard Schema. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
See also
References
- ^ Accessing the DRAC 5 Through a Network. In Computing, out-of-band management (sometimes called lights-out management or LOM) involves the use of a dedicated management channel for device Users Guide. Dell.
- ^ Accessing the DRAC 4 Through a Network. Users Guide. Dell.
- ^ Accessing the DRAC III Web-Based Interface. Users Guide. Dell.
- ^ Accessing the CMC Through a Network. Users Guide. Dell.
- ^ iDRAC, Configuring Networking Using the CMC Web Interface. Users Guide. Dell.
External links
- Managing out-of-band management in Infoworld
- DRAC product info from Dell
- Dell Remote Access Controller User Guides
- Dell Remote Access Controller 5 (DRAC 5) Version 1.20
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