Dell PowerEdge Server Administration – Using Dell OpenManage Server Administrator

Dell PowerEdge Server Administration – Using Dell OpenManage Server Administrator

Important Links

• Dell OpenManage Support Page

• OM CLI Guide, OMReport User guide and OMConfig Users guide

• Custom CLI Menu for generating reports – Created by blog Author

Dell’s OpenManagement server administration tool is a powerful hardware monitoring and reporting tool. You are able to view virtually all of the hardware and bios information with a few simple commands.

I use it to collect system information and keep track of installed hardware and the current state of the hardware.

For example if you want to know how many physical disks are installed and what their capacities are you can type the command at the command prompt:

>omreport storage pdisk controller=0 (Change to 1 if you want to view the second controller)

and what virtual RAID containers are on the server

> omreport storage vdisk controller=0 (Change to 1 if you want to view the second controller)

To view a summary of the Server you type

>omreport system summary

View Chassis temperatures:

>omreport chassis temps

These commands will display the results in the console window but that is not very useful when filing for future reference. To send these commands to a file you would:

>omreport system summary -fmt cdv -outc Summary.csv

This will output the file in a semi-colon delimited file, which is not every excel friendly. To change it to a comma delimited file you must first type:

>omconfig preferences cdvformat delimiter=comma

Any files outputted with a –fmt cdv will then be delimited by a comma, which can be directly opened with excel without having to import data and manually selecting semi-colon as the delimiter.

These are just a few example of the Open Manage Server Administrators reporting and configuration tool. It is a powerful tool that will help you keep track of any server information or changes performed on the server.

To make my life easier (and hopefully yours) I have created a menu driven tool that will automatically run a most reports. I use this tool to run reports on all my dell servers and archive them to a secure share. This helps with any support issues or track hardware changes performed on the servers. I would recommend that this be performed upon the installation of any new server and when any significant hardware changes are made. If you need any help please feel free to post a comment.