Finally, after all these years. Setting up an OpenManage Enterprise.
There is the following:
iDRAC: out of band management for cold boot.
OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA): single server management.
OpenManage Essentials: older.
OpenManage Enterprise (OMENT): one-to-many management.
OMENT is a VM with the necessary info already included. Just download the package, unzip and deploy the OVF and VMDK files:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=fmk91&oscode=naa&productcode=poweredge-m640p
Boot it up and off you go.
- change the password.
- set the ip address.
- hit the address in a browser.
- do an initial scan of subnet: ie 10.62.27.0/24
- click CONFIGURATION > FIRMWARE > CATALOG-MANAGEMENT
- click ADD
- type a name; ie DELL-SUPPORT
- bullet "Latest component versions on Dell.com"
- change to AUTOMATIC and select a time for daily sync.
- click CREATE-BASELINE
- select the catalog; ie DELL-SUPPORT
- type a baseline name; ie DELL-SUPPORT-BASELINE
- click NEXT
- bullet SELECT-GROUPS
- select ALL-DEVICES for everything.
- click FINISH
OMENT will automatically check the compliance. If not, you can start it manually without harm.
Once finished, you view the report, it will show all devices (compute, storage, chassis, etc) and show everything that is out of date with the version that is installed and the version that is available.
Simply checkmark the item(s) and click MAKE-COMPLIANT.
You can run the job now or schedule for later time such as overnight. It will let you know if an reboot is required or not. I choose an update that does not require a reboot and simply bullet UPDATE-NOW and click UPDATE as a test.
This puts the job in the queue and runs it automatically. You can view the job if want and it will show the status of each update and the entire process. After a few minutes, it shows the item updated successfully.
As a next test, I checkmark the entire compute and click MAKE-COMPLIANT. I select UPDATE-NOW and bullet "Stage for Next Server Reboot." It took a bit of time but it downloaded all the packages to the LifeCycle Controller and staged them for update durning next reboot.
With the system logged in, I rebooted the system. With the virtual console, I could see the packages be applied as the system booted up.
The update included the bios, network firmware, perc, ssd firmware and a few other firmware items.